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3grat!)'s i^ctiagogtcal iLibrar^ — 22 



THE 



PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD 



BY 



FREDERICK TRACY, B.A., Ph.D. 

LECTURER IN PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 



» > J 3 3 3 



FIFTH 'EDITION 
REVTSED, WITH A2^ ADWy'ION^Afj ^ C/I^iRTfiR 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 

D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 

1901 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

MAR. 18 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLASS CUYXo. N». 

COPY B. 



L> 



\c\o^ 



CopyRiGHT, 1894 AND 1901, 
By FREDEKICK TPwACY. 



Typography by J. S. Gushing & Co., Boston. 



Presswork by Rockwell & Churchill, Boston. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PRELI3IINARY 



o>t^c 



PAGE 
V 



CHAPTER I. SENSATION. 



SECTION 

I. Sight . 



II. Hearing 

III. Touch . 

IV. Taste . 
V. Smell . 

VI. Temperature 

VII. Organic Sensations 

VIII. Muscular Feelings 



2 
20 
27 
31 
34 
37 
38 
40 



CHAPTER II. INTELLECT. 



I. 


Perception 


. 45 


II. 


Memory 


. 48 


in. 


Association ...... 


. 52 


IV. 


Imagination 


. 55 


V. 


The Discursive Processes . 


.• . 58 


VI. 


The Idea of Self 


. 65 



IV CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER III. THE FEELINGS. 

SECTION PAGE 

I. Fear 72 

II. Anger 7.5 

III. Surprise, Astonishment, Curiosity 77 

IV. ^Esthetic Feelings 81 

V. Love, Sympathy, etc. 84 



•CHAPTER IV. VOLITION. 

I. Impulsive Movements 93 

II. Reflex Movements 94 

III. Instinctive Movements 98 

IV. Ideational Movements 102 

CHAPTER V. LANGUAGE. 

I, Heredity vs. Education in Language . . . .115 

II. The Physiological Development 119 

III. The Phonetic and Psychic Development . . . 124 

CHAPTER VI. 

^Esthetic, Moral, and Religious Ideas . . . 161 



PRELIMINARY. 



>J«io 



The comparative method of study has commended itself 
to all the sciences in modern times by its fertility in results, 
and is now being employed extensively in two principal 
directions: viz., the analogical and the genetical. The 
philologist, for example, compares his own language, on the 
one hand with other languages (in the search for analogies), 
and on the other avails himself of all manuscripts, inscrip- 
tions, etc., which show him his language in its earliest 
stages, and help him to determine by the operation of what 
causes, and according to what laws, it has developed from 
its original crude and inefficient, state to its present pol- 
ished and complicated condition. And similarly with other 
sciences. In the case of psychology the application of the 
comparative method has led the investigator to the obser- 
vation of mental manifestations in the lower animals; in 
human beings of morbid or defective mental life, such as 
the insane, the idiotic, the blind, deaf and dumb ; in peoples 
of different types of culture, ancient and modern, savage 
and civilized ; and finally to the study of mental phenomena 
in their genesis and early development in the life of the 
child. If the child is only the adult in miniature, and if 



VI THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

society is only the individual " wrjt large," then in studying 
the infant mind we are approaching a vantage ground from 
which we may catch a prophetic view, not only of psycho- 
logical, but also of sociological phenomena. 

When we compare the young child with the young animal, 
we cannot fail to be struck by the apparent superiority of 
the latter over the former, at the beginning of life. The 
human infant, for example, requires weeks to attain the 
power of holding his head in equilibrium, while the young 
chicken runs about and picks up grains of wheat before 
the first day of his life is over. This, however, carefully 
considered, is a token rather of the superiority than of the 
inferiority of the human being. The higher you ascend in 
the scale of being, the more varied and complex is the en- 
vironment in which the individual moves, and to which he 
must adapt his movements. This adaptation requires, on 
the physiological side, a cerebral and nervous development, 
and on the psychic side 3, mental growth, for which time is 
an absolute necessity. Animals go' on all their lives, doing 
the same simple things, which require a minimum of mental 
activity, and which, by dint of constant repetition, produce 
physiological adjustments that become at length hereditary; 
so that phenomena which seem to the casual observer the 
index of an astonishing degree of mental advancement — 
such as the "scampering" of young chicks on a certain 
peculiar call of the mother — are really at bottom little more 
than the response of an organism, adjusted by heredity, to 
the action of an external stimulus. 

The longer and more arduous the journey, the more time 



PRELIMINARY. Vll 

is required for preparation ; the more complicated the art to 
be acquired, the more extended is the period of apprentice- 
ship. So the child, having an infinitely grander life before 
him, and infinitely more exalted, complicated and difficult 
operations to perform — mental, moral and physical — re- 
quires a longer period of tutelage than the chicken, which 
on the first day of his life scratches and pecks, and to the 
end of his existence makes no advance upon these simple 
operations. The young animal, before the end of the first 
day of his life, does what it takes the child a year to accom- 
plish; but the child of two years does what the animal never 
will accomplish to the end of his days. 

The object of the present essay is to discuss infant 
psychology. AYhen and how do mental phenomena take 
their rise in the infant consciousness? How far are they 
conditioned by heredity, and how far by education, includ- 
ing suggestion? What is the nature of the process by which 
the automatic and mechanical pass over into the conscious 
and voluntary? These are some of the questions to which 
the following pages may help to furnish an answer. That 
they may do so, it has been thought best to gather together, 
so far as possible, the best work that has been done in actual 
observation of children, arrange this under appropriate 
headings, incorporate the results of numerous observations 
made by the writer himself, and present the whole in 
epitomized form, with copious references and quotations. 

The first edition was written in 1893, at Clark Univer- 
sity, and presented there as a thesis for the degree of Ph.D. 
Dr. G. Stanley Hall, President of the University, was kind 



viii THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

enough to write an introductory note, from which I may 
quote the following sentences : — 

" The author has here undertaken to present as concisely, 
yet as completely, as possible, the results of the systematic 
study of children up to date, and has included everything 
of importance that could be found. This work was greatly 
needed, and has been done with a thoroughness which all 
interested in the subject will gratefully recognize. Most 
observations have been limited to one or more aspects of 
the vast, many-sided topic. As we are now able to catch a 
glimpse for the first time of the entire field, we realize the 
importance of results already achieved, and the yet greater 
promise of the future. The questions here treated are 
fundamental for both psychology and pedagogy, for the 
more fundamental the traits, the earlier they unfold. Yet 
it should be remembered that the data for infant study 
are relatively more complete than are the records of chil- 
dren of school age. The latter, when they are fully pre- 
sented, may be more practical, but the former are more 
fundamental for philosophy and ethics.^' 

Within a year a second edition was issued, with little 
enlargement or modification, beyond the occasional revision 
of a passage, the addition of several footnotes, a table of 
contents, an index, and a more extended bibliography. 

Since 1894 the book has passed through its third and 
fourth editions, and has been translated into the German, 
Eussian, Hungarian, and Japanese languages. The present, 
or fifth edition, is carefully revised, and to some extent 
rewritten. Account has been taken of all the best contri- 



PRELIMINARY. IX 

butions to the subject, up to the present date; and a large 
number of new observations have been made by the author 
himself, and their results incorporated. Finally, with great 
hesitation and diffidence, the author has ventured to 
append a brief sixth chapter on the aesthetic, moral, and 
religious development of children. On the other hand, 
the bibliography has been dropped, since the literature of 
the subject has now grown to such proportions that a 
complete bibliography would require a separate volume. 
I cannot forbear calling attention in this place to one 
great general principle, which is so constantly illustrated in 
the child's mental life that it may be considered universal. 
It might be appropriately named the principle of trans- 
formation, and explained as follows : Every mental phe- 
nomenon passes through a graduated ascending series of 
development. At first, the physiological predominates, 
consciousness is at a minimum, and the so-called mental 
phenomenon would be more accurately defined as the reaction 
of the nervous system to external stimuli or to organic 
conditions. For example, the child cries at intervals from 
the moment of his birth, but at first this cry is independent 
of his will, and possesses scarcely any mental significance, 
for it is made without cerebral cooperation, and — as in the 
case of microcephalic infants — even when the cerebrum is 
entirely absent. Later the mental aspect becomes more 
prominent. When the intellect and will have become 
sufficiently developed, the child directs his attention to the 
act, makes it his own, and performs it voluntarily. The 
process perhaps has not changed at all, to outward appear- 



X TH.E PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

ance, but when viewed on the inner side, it is seen to have 
been completely transformed in character; and one of the 
most difficult tasks for the psychologist is to determine the 
ivhen and the how of this transformation. 

The exact time at which each psychic activity makes its 
appearance is perhaps of less importance than the order of 
the various activities ; yet to ascertain the latter, the former 
must be carefully noted. Hence both absolute and relative 
times receive attention in the following pages. 

I have room to acknowledge only the most important of 
my obligations. First of all, to the President of Clark 
University, Dr. G. Stanley Hall, but for whose help and 
counsel the book would never have been Avritten. Then to 
Professor Baldwin of Princeton, Professor McCurdy of 
Toronto, Professor Donaldson of Chicago, Professor Kirk- 
patrick of Winona, Minnesota, and to Professors Sanford, 
Hodge, Chamberlain, and Burnham, of Clark University, 
who furnished valuable notes and suggestions. Then to Miss 
Sara E. Wiltse, of Boston, who allowed me to consult her 
very valuable memoranda concerning the child "A" men- 
tioned frequently in the text ; as well as to the mothers of 
the children "C" and " W," and many others, who placed 
valuable notes at my disposal. 

I may add by way of explanation that the children " F," 
" G," and " R," referred to in the text, were the subjects of 
prolonged and careful observations made by mj^self during 
the preparation of this work. Other, more isolated observa- 
tions are referred to without any special designation. 

F. tRACY. 

Toronto, 1900. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 



CHAPTER I. 

SENSATION. 

It is important to treat sensation first, because it lies at 
the foundation of all mental development. All the higher 
processes of mind are simply the result of progressive 
" syntheses of the manifold " as given in sensation. Though 
we may not agree with Locke, that all ideas are derived 
from sensation, yet we must agree that there are no ideas 
in the mind prior to sensation. And looking at the active 
side of our nature, the intimate connection between the 
senses and the will is equally manifest. Our sense-impres- 
sions, produced by external objects upon the peripheral 
organism, are conveyed along the afferent nerves to sensory 
centres closely connected with corresponding motor centres 
in the cerebral cortex. Hence the importance of the child's 
sense-growth. 

Are any sensations felt in the foetal stage of existence ? 
And if so, what? In answer to this question, we may, first 
of all, proceed negatively and determine those senses which 
obviously cannot be in operation at this time. Any sense 
requiring as the condition of its exercise the medium of 
light or air, cannot operate until the child is born, for 
prior to this time he does not come into contact with these 

1 



IJ THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

media. On this ground, sight, hearing and smell are prob- 
ably to be excluded ; the first on account of the darkness 
of the uterus, the others because the auditory and nasal 
passages are at this time entirely filled with the amniotic 
liquid, to the exclusion of all air, even if this were avail- 
able. There is reason to believe, however, that from about 
the middle of this period the foetus is susceptible to changes 
of temperature, and that touch is to some degree awakened 
by contact with the surrounding matrix. To what extent 
these rudimentary foetal sensations partake of the truly 
psychic character is of course very difficult to determine. 
Many psychologists^ are of the opinion that they do not 
at all involve the cooperation of the centres of sensational 
and motor ideality. ]S"evertheless, it is certain that during 
the later months of pregnancy, very great changes take 
place in the embryonic brain, especially in the cerebrum.^ 
If it be allowable to conjecture, it is probable that the 
" sensations " of the embryo involve consciousness, though 
very dim and vague, and that the foetal movements are 
reflex or automatic, taking place in virtue of an organic 
connection between feeling and movement, due in large 
part to heredity. 

I. Sight. 

The Embryonic Eye. — During the earlier stages of the 
embryonic growth, the head is much larger in proportion 
to the other parts of the body than at any subsequent 
time ; and this is especially noticeable in the anterior 
regions, where the primary vesicle bulges out prominently 
on each side. These protruding portions gradually fold in 
upon themselves to form the nervous parts of the eye, such 
as the retina and optic nerve. Simultaneously with this, 

^ E.g.^ Wirchow, quoted by Perez. 2 Bastian. 



SENSATION. 3 

the crystalline lens is developed by the involution of the 
epiblast, and is received into the hollow cup formed by 
the folding in of the primary vesicle spoken of. The re- 
maining space afterwards becomes filled with the vitreous 
humor. " The lids make their appearance gradually as 
folds of integument, subsequently to the formation of the 
globe in the third month of foetal life. When they have 
met together in front of the eye, their edges become closely 
glued together by an epithelial exudation which is removed 
a short time before birth." 

We have alread}^ remarked that no sensations of sight 
are received during the foetal period. If this be true, the 
cause lies, not in the imperfection of the organ itself — for 
the experiments of Kussmaul and Genzmer on premature 
children, show that at least two months before the normal 
birth-time, the mechanism of the eye is fully developed and 
capable of reaction to appropriate stimuli — but in the ab- 
sence of light-impressions. There may even be at this time 
vague sensations of light, arising from subjective or intra- 
uterine causes, though if there be, they can have but little 
psychological importance, and can by no means account for 
the actual functioning of the eye immediately after birth. 

The Eye of the ISTew-borx. — If, therefore, the state- 
ment is made that the new-born child is blind, it must not 
be taken to mean that he is in darkness — for the peripheral 
mechanism of the eye is complete at birth, and the differ- 
ence between light and darkness is felt from the beginning 
— but only this, that he cannot as yet see tilings, in the 
proper sense of the terms. This is due to lack of expe- 
rience, to imperfect development of the cerebral centres, 
and to the dazzling effect of the light, which now streams 
in, as Sigismund says, with millions of waves, upon a 
delicate organ, accustomed, up to this time, to complete 



4 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

darkness.^ This latter obstacle, however, is soon over- 
come, and the child's progress in seeing takes place with 
great rapidity. 

The sensation of light is the first feeling, having an ex- 
ternal cause, which the child experiences by means of the 
eye. This organ is especially adapted, by its peculiar 
mechanism of retina and rods and cones, and by its nerves 
and muscles of convergence, contraction and accommoda- 
tion, to receive the rays of light that fall upon it; and 
hence, as soon as the first shock is over, and the infant 
eye has become accustomed to its new surroundings, it 
turns toward the light as naturally as the opening petals 
of a newly-blown flower turn toward the rising sun. Or, 
as Locke has said : " Even as the soul thirsts for ideas, so 
the eye of the child thirsts for the light." This sensibility 
to light is normally present in the first minutes of life, and 
is rarely delayed beyond a few hours, except in the case of 
some malformation of the organs. At this stage, however, 
the distinction of light and darkness is felt rather than 
known; and even the turning of the head toward the light, 
which has been observed on the second day of life, and 
even as early as the twentieth hour,^ must be considered 
as nearly akin to the movement of the plant toward the 
light. But this condition of things is not of long duration. 
To take a single case (that of Preyer's boy), we are told 
that he soon began to show signs of pleasures at a moderate 
light, pain at too powerful glare, and less pleasure in dark- 

1 Kussmaul also remarks : ' ' Ausgetragene Kinder, welclie eben zur 
Welt gekommen und ruhig geworden sind, versuchen ofter das Auge 
wiederholt zu offnen sind aber immer wieder gezwungen es rasch und 
kramphaft vor dem einfallenden hellen Lichte zu schliessen." 

2 Kussmaul cites the case of a boy, who though born in the seventh 
month, yet turned his head towards the window on the second day of 
his life. 



SENSATION. 5 

ness. Even during the first day tlie expression of his face 
changed when an intervening object cut off the light, and on 
the eleventh day he would cry when the light was carried 
out of the room. As time passed on, he continually took 
increasing notice of these sensations, until in his second 
month the sight of a bright light, or a brightly colored 
object was sufficient to elicit from- him exclamations of 
delight. 

Too powerful a light causes discomfort, even in sleep. 
The child knits his eyelids more closely together, or even 
becomes restless and awakes. A very bright light is espe- 
cially painful immediately on awakening. Preyer observed 
that his boy shut his eyes and turned his head away when a 
candle was held close to him on awakening. But when he 
had been awake for some hours, he looked steadily, without 
blinking, at a candle held one metre from his eyes.^ 

With these qualifications, we may conclude, then, that 
"light is pleasant to the eye," being its natural "food," and 
that under its influence the delicate organ of vision grows 
and develops, the visual centres in the cerebrum become 
differentiated and capable of performing their function, thus 
rendering possible the subsequent apprehension of qualities 
in external things by means of this sense. 

Physiological Adjustments to Light. — At the begin- 
ning of life, all adjustments of the visual organ to the 
strength of the light are reflex. For example, from the 
very first the filaments that contract the pupil perform their 
function. The pupil accommodates itself to the brightness 
of the light, expanding and contracting, as Kussmaul and 
Raehlmann have shown. Both pupils contract when the 
light reaches one of them. These movements of contraction 

1 I believe this sensitiveness to light on first awaking is also quite 
common among adults. 



b THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

remain automatic to the end of life. It is otherwise with 
such movements as following a moving light or object with 
the eyes. This is at first undoubtedly reflex, since it takes 
place before the conscious centres have been sufficiently 
developed for voluntary action, but it afterwards certainly 
comes within the domain of the will, as is evident from 
adult conscious experi-ence. 

Eye Movements. — This includes movements of the eye- 
balls (upward, downward, and from right to left, etc.), and 
movements of the lids (raising and lowering), as well as 
the relation of the two to each other. 

Does the child possess a complete nerve-mechanism for 
eye-movements, working perfectly from the beginning, or 
does he gradually and painfully acquire all eye-movements? 
The most recent observations lead to the following conclu- 
sion : The mechanism is inherited complete so far as pupil, 
retina and nerve tracts are concerned, but the corresponding 
brain centres are not yet developed in the first days, and 
become so only by experience ; consequently the adjustment 
of movements to external conditions takes place by degrees. 
No doubt there is a hereditary predisposition to coordinated 
movements, which to some extent facilitates the subsequent 
adjustment, but the largest share is due to experience. The 
following facts have been established by careful observations : 

First. — As to movements of the eye-balls : Complete con- 
scious coordination of the movements of the two eyes does 
not take place during the first days. True, the eyes some- 
times move together, even from the first, ^ but there are also 
numberless non-coordinated movements, which proves that 

1 According to one observer on the fourth day, according to another 
on the second day, while a third noticed them five minutes after 

birth. Miss Shinn found these movements usually symmetrical from 
the first. 



SENSATION. 7 

the coordinated ones are accidental at first, and that the 
useless movements are only gradually eliminated. Eaehl- 
mann and Witkowski, in a very large number of observa- 
tions on new-born children, carried on for fifteen years, 
found that the infant eyes, especially in sleep, "assume 
positions and perform movements whicli are entirely con- 
trary to all the principles of association, " including complete 
opposite movements of the eyes, resulting in divergence of 
eye-positions. Sometimes the eyes move together, later- 

ally and vertically (though this coordination is not so 
perfect as in the adult), but just as frequently are the 
movements irregular. Sometimes one eye moves, while 

the other remains at rest. Sometimes the head is turned 
in one direction, and the eyes in another. A great deal of 
unnecessary convergence takes place, as I have frequently 
observed. In most observed cases, however, these asym- 
metrical movements have become very much less frequent 
by the third month, and, at a little later time, have almost 
entirely disappeared, except in sleep. 

Second. — As to movements of the lids : The only lid- 
movement that can be accepted as inborn, is the sudden 
"blinking" when a foreign substance comes into contact 
with the lashes or the cornea, or on the sudden approach of 
a strong light. The mere approach of the object, without 
contact, does not produce blinking at first; indeed, in some 
cases, it fails in children two months old. All other 

lid-movements are at first accidental. Sometimes the lids 
move together, though more frequently they do not. Some- 
times one eye remains open while the other is shut. The 
two eyes do not always open to an equal degree ; and often, 
if one eye be disturbed and blinking take place, the lid of 
the undisturbed eye will follow some time after the other. 
The lids are often raised while the look is directed down- 
ward, and vice versa. The child often falls asleep with the 



S THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

lids a little apart. Coordination, then, is not perfect at 
first, but becomes so by experience. Not only so, but the 
child actually has to unlearn several movements (e.g.y rais- 
ing the lids while the eyes are directed downward) and these 
have become impossible in the adult. Gradually these 
asymmetrical movements disappear, until by the end of the 
third month they have become very rare, except in sleep. 

All that has been said concerning movements of the eyes, 
and of the lids, separately, is true, mutatis mutandis, of the 
relation of these to each other. Perfect coordination among 
the several branches of the oculomotorius is not present at 
the beginning of life (not at all during the first ten days, 
according to Raehlmann), but is a gradual attainment, 
requiring time and experience. But when once the awaken- 
ing mind has taken possession of the eye, and made the 
movements of that organ its own, it becomes one of the 
most expressive organs of the body, and reveals the various 
shades of the inner feeling with astonishing accuracy. 

Fixation. — By this is meant conscious direction of the 
gaze upon an object, as contrasted with passive staring into 
space. And the question of most importance here is : When 
does the child pass from the one to the other ? The question 
is important, because it throws light upon the beginning of 
volition, which, in its exercise, determines in such large 
measure the mental and moral development of the child. 

Preyer divides the " seeing " of the infant into four stages. 
I shall follow his classification, bringing under each heading 
also the observations made by others on the period in question : 

First. — Staring into empty space; experiencing a sensa- 
tion, but not perceiving an object. The ability to " fixate " 
an object is lacking in the newly-born, because he has as 
yet no control over the muscles that move the head and eyes. 
The apparent looking of the first days is not, therefore, a 



SENSATION. 9 

voluntary or intelligent action, but only the instinctive 
turning of the head and eye so as to bring the light into 
contact with the central portion of the retina, where it pro- 
duces the greatest amount of pleasurable feeling. When 
Champneys observes that one child " fixed " his eyes on a 
candle on the seventh day, and Darwin reports that another 
child did the same on the ninth day, Preyer remarks that 
this was probably not real looking, but only staring into 
space, since in other similar cases it was observed that the 
child continued to " look " when the object was withdrawn. 
There is probably no fixation in the first nine days. 

Second. — The child no longer " stares, " but " looks. " He 
fastens his gaze upon a bright extended surface {e.g., his 
mother's face) and when another bright, moderately large 
object comes within the field of vision, he turns his eyes 
from the first to the second. One child was observed to do 
this on his eleventh, and another on his fourteenth day. 
Along with the fixing of the gaze, there is also a more 
intelligent expression. Perez reports that a child observed 
by him "looked fixedly for three or four minutes at a 
flickering reflection of light before the end of his first 
month." In another case, an object was looked at steadily 
in the fourth week for the first time ; in another, a yellow 
dress held the child's gaze at five weeks; and in still 
another the power of fixation is reported on as still absent 
when the child was two months old. Sigismund 

observes that about the middle of the first three months the 
child " begins to look at objects with attention; " and Raehl- 
mann found that "appropriate selection among the many 
possible eye and lid movements, with fixation of the object, 
took place for the first time after the fifth week." ^ 

1 Taking the average of the above cases, we have the thirty-second 
day, or during the fifth week, as the time of the beginning of fixation, 



10 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

Third. — In the third stage, the child has acquired the 
power to follow with his eyes a bright, moving object. 
Here we have associated movements of the eyes, the head 
being motionless, or nearly so. We have now, therefore, a 
distinct advance, requiring a higher exercise of power over 
the muscles. The movement is not accomplished if the 
object be moved too rapidly. In one case the child's eyes 
followed a moving candle in the second week; in another, 
on the twenty-third day. But most of the observers have 
noticed this activity first about the fifth week, some as late 
as the sixth or seventh. Raehlmann remarks on this point 
to the following effect: Associated lateral movements of the 
eyes can be found seldom earlier than the fifth week. Hold 
a bright or colored object at a little distance, directly before 
the child's eyes. One soon notices a peculiar change of 
expression, accompanied by cessation of the movements 
which the limbs until now were executing. The object has 
been fixated. Now move it slowly in a horizontal direction 
to one side, and both the eyes follow, but without movement 
of the head. If the object be moved quickly, the child's 
eyes lose it at once ; and also if the movement be vertical 
instead of horizontal.^ 

In the early part of this third stage, Preyer holds, there 
is no necessary cooperation of the cerebrum, but only of the 
corpora quadrigemina, and he cites in proof the experiment 
of Longet with a pigeon, from which the cerebral hemi- 
spheres had been carefully removed, and which, in that 
condition, followed with its ,eyes the flame of a moving 
candle. It may be remarked, however, that since the 
instinctive and reflex play so much larger a part relatively 

1 Genzmer, on the other hand, by shaking a bright object before the 
eyes, obtained not only fixation, but "following" movements in a 
large number of children, at a much earlier age than this. 



S15NSATI0N. 11 

in the lower animals than in man, this ]Droof is not entirely 
trustworthy, forasmuch as a movement, which in the lower 
animals is reflex, may in man require the cooperation of 
the cerebrum. More to the purpose w^oulcl be the case of 
an acephalous or microcephalous child. Kollman says of the 
microcephalous Margaret Becker, eight years of age : " Her 
gait is tottering, the movements of the head and extremities 
jerky, not always coordinated, hence unsteady, inappro- 
priate, and spasmodic; her look is restless, objects are not 
definitely fixated.''^ This case seems to point in the opposite 
direction from that of Longet's pigeon, and Preyer's con- 
clusion therefrom. 

Fourth. — Here we pass from looking to observing, to the 
active search for objects. The child has acquired ability 
to give definite direction to the gaze, and hold it there. Of 
course the first attempts are often ineffectual, but, roughly 
speaking, from about the third to the fifth month, this 
power is obtained. A girl of ten weeks looked for the 
face of a person calling her. A boy in his sixth week 
moved his head to follow a look cast in a certaii;! direction. 
Another began in his sixteenth week to look intently at his 
own hands. Another of twelve weeks, on hearing a noise 
made by a person on a drinking glass with a moistened 
finger, turned his head in the direction of the noise, and, 
after one or tAVO ineffectual attempts, found the object with 
his eyes and fixated it. In the fourteenth week he followed 
promptly the movements of a pendulum which made forty 
complete oscillations per minute. Sigismund's boy, at 

nineteen weeks, paid great attention to the movements of a 
pendulum, and afterwards followed the movements of a 
spoon from dish to mouth and back again, with eager mien. 
Rapid movements, however, are not as yet preferred. In 
the railway carriage, the child of this age does not look at 
the passing objects, but rather at the walls and ceiling of 



12 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

the coach. Not before the twenty-ninth week (in one 
observed case) did the child look distinctly, beyond doubt, 
at a sparrow flying by. Another "watched the flight of 
birds" when five months old. It will readily be 

observed that the full attainment of this fourth stage 
involves voluntary control of the mechanism of the eye as 
well as considerable progress in the intellectual apprehen- 
sion of the external world. So that now the child is no 
longer the reflex, staring creature, but has become the bona 
Jide " seeing " human being. 

Seeing in Perspective. — Numerous observations con- 
firm the following statements : 

(a) The new-born child does not see, in any sense of the 
word, objects that are very distant from him ; or if he sees 
them at all, the impression made by them upon the retina is 
so vague as not to enter into distinct consciousness. In- 
deed, there are few distinct retinal images at first from 
objects either near or distant. 

(b) For a long time after he is able to see objects at a 
considerable distance, and several objects at unequal dis- 
tances in the field of vision together, lie still does not know 
how unequal their distances are, or even that they are 
unequal.^ The physiological mechanism of the eye, by 
which it is " accommodated " to the distance of the object 
seen, operates very early; but the estimation of distance is 
long imperfect. At one month and five days, Tiedemann's 
son "distinguished objects outside him, and tried to seize 
them, extending his hands and bending his body." By the 
end of the second month, there is, according to one observer, 



1 "II est prouv6, par des faits certains, qu'ils sent plusieurs mois, 
sans avoir d'idee precise des distances." Cabanis, "Rapports du 
physique et du moral de I'homme." 



SENSATION^. 13 

a vague idea of distance. But most observers place it much 
later than this. One says: "The first real grasping of the 
fixated object, with appreciation of its distance, was observed 
about the end of the fifth month. But it is very slowly 
acquired, and not until much later than this does the hand 
proceed directly, by the nearest way, to the object." 
Another found but little comprehension of size or distance 
until the sixth month. Another reports of a little boy that 
when nearly a year old, he " saw the moon and stars, and 
his eagerness to have the moon was most interesting. 
Night after night he would call for it, stretching out his 
little hands towards the window." The girl F. did not 

look at anything very far away until she was a year old. 
Another child, even in the second year, "repeatedly mis- 
named men or boys at perhaps twenty yards distance ; the 
less familiar person being almost always called by the name 
of the one better known." Preyer's boy, when four 

months old, " often grasped at objects which were twice the 
length of his arm from him ; when considerably over a year 
old he grasped again and again at a lamp in the ceiling of a 
railway carriage, and when nearly two years old tried to 
hand a piece of paper to a person looking out of a second 
story window, from the garden below — "a convincing proof 
how little he appreciates distance." ^ 

(c) At first the child sees only colored surface, and not 
figures in the third dimension. All objects present them- 
selves to his eye simply as patches of color. Gradually, by 
the aid of movement and touch, he comes to a knowledge of 
their cubic properties. Hence also arises by experience an 



1 And yet another child had apparently attained a comparatively 
correct estimation of distance by the end of her seventh month, as 
she "invariably refused to reach for an object more than fourteen 
inches distant, her reaching distance being from nine to ten inches." 



14 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

association between the forms and distances of objects and 
their varying degrees of luminosity, so that the child comes 
to interpret the one in terms of the other. Hence the 
progress of the child in complete vision, including all that 
is meant by the appreciation of perspective, is immensely 
facilitated from the time he begins to walk, since, by loco- 
motion, he is able to approach the object and bring sight, 
touch, and the muscular sense to bear upon its examination. 

Color Discrimixation. — Not only is color blindness 
" notoriously hereditary " as an abnormal condition in the 
adult,^ but it is the normal condition of the new-born 
child. Since the tractus opticus does not get its nerve 
medulla, and with that its permanent coloring, until the 
third or fourth day of life, there is probably no discrimina- 
tion of colors up to that time, but only of light and dark- 
ness. Moreover, even when discrimination of colors has 
begun, it proceeds very slowly, and the investigation is beset 
by difficulties. How are we to distinguish {e.g.) the mere 
feeling of difference between sensations of color from intel- 
ligent apprehension of the colors themselves? Very little 
can be done nntil the child can speak, and even then new 
difficulties present themselves. The names of colors are 
more difficult to acquire than the names of things, because 
more abstract. Grant Allen found that children of two 
years and even more, who knew perfectly well the names of 
grapes, strawberries, and oranges, yet had no appropriate 
verbal symbol for purple, crimson, or orange, as a color,* 

1 Color blindness seems much more common among males than 
among females. Tests made in 1879 on nearly thirty thousand stu- 
dents of the various schools in the city of Boston, showed that of the 
boys four in every hundred were color blind, while among the girls 
the proportion was less than one in a thousand. B. Joy Jeffers, A.M., 
M.D., in "School Documents," No. 13, Boston, 1880. 



SENSATION. 15 

and I have found in examining the chikl-vocabularies, which 
I have collected for the fifth chapter of the present work, 
that out of five thousand four hundred words, only about 
thirty are color terms. In several cases the vocabulary of 
a child two years old contains not a single color word, 
though he habitually employs from three to five hundred 
words. Another difficulty lies in the association between 

the color and its name. The child may know a color — red 
— perfectly well; and may also know the sound — red, — 
but he may not be able to associate the two together, so as 
when red is named, to point it out; or, when it is pointed 
out, to name it. This is not from lack of ability to distin- 
guish color from color, but from inability to associate the 
color w^ith the spoken word. 

A girl ten days old had her attention arrested by the con- 
trasted colors of her mother's dress. She seemed pleased 
and smiled. A boy twenty -three days old was pleased 

with a brightly colored curtain. Another child in his 
second month took notice of the difference between bright 
colors and quiet ones, and showed his preference for the 
former by smiles. Another, towards the end of his second 
month, was attracted by white, blue and violet, other colors 
being indifferent. A girl of three months and a boy of five 
months seemed pleased with some drawings of a uniformly 
gray color, while Genzmer's boy for the first four months 
of his life seemed attracted only by white objects, but after 
that time he began to show a preference for other bright 
colors, especially red. Eaehlmann found no distinction of 
similar objects differently colored until a good while after 
the fifth week. Sometimes a strange antipatliy to certain 
colors is manifested. In several cases children have refused 
to go to anybody dressed in black. 

Experiments in color discrimination, which involve the 
use of words, may be carried on in two ways. A color may 



16 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

be named, and the child required to pick that color out of 
several; or the color may be shown him,^and he required to 
name it. Preyer used both methods, with the following 
results: In the twentieth month repeated trials yielded 
absolutely no result, but in the beginning of the child's 
third year, the first correct responses were obtained, the 
result being eleven right answers and six wrong ones. In 
this case he used two colors, red and green. Then yellow 
was added, and at once took its place as the color most 
readily perceived (26ch month). The percentages of right 
answers were : Yellow 82, green 77, red 72. Blue v/as then 
added, with the following result : Yellow 94, green 79, red 
70, blue 69. Trials made a week later with five colors 
resulted as follows : Yellow 100, violet 92, green 90, red 83, 
blue 42. Then, with six colors : Yellow 96, violet 95, red 
84, gray 83, green 74, blue 67 (26th and 27th months). 
Finally, two weeks later, trial was made with nine colors, 
resulting as follows: Yellow, gray, brown, and black 100, 
red 94, violet 85, green 36, rose 33, blue 23. Preyer carried 
these experiments a good deal further, and varied the 
method, but with substantially the same results. The sum- 
mary of all his tests up to the 34th month gives the follow- 
ing order of preferences : Yellow, brown, red, violet, black, 
rose, orange, gray, green, blue. When yellow and red were 
removed, the child showed less interest. Blue and green 
were avoided, and mostly named wrong, green being often 
called "garnix'- ("gar nichts " = "nothing at all"). 

Binet made a number of experiments with a little girl 
from the 32nd to the 40th month, with results which I may 
epitomize as follows : 

1st series : Bed 100, green 61, yellow 52. 

2nd series : Red 100, blue 92, maroon and rose 89, violet 
75, green 71, white 62, yellow 38. 

In these experiments, the child was required to point out 



SENSATION. 17 

the color named to lier. The method was now reversed, 
and the child required to name the color pointed out to her. 
The result was as follows : 

1st series : Eed 100, yellow 0. 

2nd series : Blue 100, red 96, green 82, rose 57, violet 51, 
maroon 50, white 45, yellow 28. (M. Binet says every time 
an error is committed with yellow, it consists in confound- 
ing it with green. He noticed also that violet was con- 
founded with blue.) 

Some remarkable differences may be noticed between the 
results of these two observers. For example, in the percep- 
tion of yellow: while Preyer's child perceived this color 
better than any other, Binet's little girl had the greatest 
difficulty with it. Also as regards blue : in the one case 
this color stands at the very bottom of the list, while in the 
other it is almost at the top.^ 

The greatest uniformity obtains in the case of bright and 
glaring colors, such as red.^ This may have a physiological 
basis in the fact that when the eyes are closed in a bright 
light, red is the only color visible. 

In the foregoing experiments, the child must know the 
names of the colors before the tests can be made; and we 
can never be certain that the mistakes committed do not 
arise from confusion of words rather than of colors. On 
this account, the following tests made by Binet seem to me 
of far greater value. Instead of the " methode d'appella- 
tion," as he calls the sj^stem just explained, he adopted here 

i Experiments made by Wolfe on the school children of Lincoln, 
Nebraska, gave results differing from both Preyer and Binet. Follow- 
ing is the order in this case : White, black and red (nearly always 
correctly named), then blue, yellow, green, pink, orange and violet, in 
the order named. 

^ Though in the case studied by Miss Shinn red gave a good deal of 
trouble. 



18 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

the "methode de reconnaissance," which consists in show- 
ing the child a counter of a certain color, then shuffling it 
together with a number of counters of that color and others, 
and requiring him to pick out a counter of that color. In 
this way the name is not ased at all, and the test proceeds 
purely on the recognition of color. The results by this 
method were much more satisfactory. With three colors 
— red, green and yellow — no mistakes were made; and 
even with seven colors, and with an interval of time between 
the perception and the recognition, the errors were very few 
indeed. This seems to show that the child's chief difficulty 
is not in recognition of the color, but in association of the 
color with the sound of its name.^ 

Objective Ixterpretatiox. — The understanding of the 
meaning of the visual sensation is the slowest in develop- 
ment of all the faculties connected with the eye. The sub- 
ject belongs indeed properly under the head of Perception 
and Judgment, and little need be said upon it here. 

To comprehend the distance and form of an object, is an 
advance on the rudimentary "seeing" of the object; but to 
understand loliat the object is, so as to distinguish it from 
other objects, and be conscious of a relation between it and 
the perceiving subject, constitutes a still further advance. 
The child attains this further advance slowly and painfully, 
at the cost of many tumbles and scratches, the result of 
errors in judgment that are sometimes pitiable, often comi- 
cal. Feeling and instinct render great service at this time, 
and often lead the child to do things which, on a casual 
view, might too readily be interpreted as the work of judg- 



1 For a criticism of all these methods, and the explanation of another, 
in which the whole question is viewed from the motor standpoint, see 
^wo articles by Prof, Baldwin, in Science for April 21st and 28th, 1893. 



SENSATION. 19 

meut; as in tlie case of the child of less thau a month, who 
made a wry face at the sight of some bitter medicine. 

The first object to be recognized is usually the mother's 
face, which is greeted with a smile of pleasure by children 
only a few weeks old- But this first recognition is very 
vague and inaccurate, as is shown by the fact that the infant 
"recognizes " in the same way, at first, any other face which 
resembles hers in broad outlines ; and that when recognition 
of the father's face takes place, the child bestows his smile 
of welcome also on any other bearded gentleman who hap- 
pens to come within his range of vision. For a long time, 
objects are not grasped as comprehensive wholes, but rather 
some striking feature is apprehended, and all else left out 
"of account. Hence arise some of the very peculiar associa- 
tion groupings, which we shall notice in connection with 
language. From about the sixth month, however, evidences 
of intelligent comprehension of many of the more common 
objects may be observed. The smile or nod of the parents 
is distinguished from that of strangers, and responded to in 
a different manner. Visual impressions connected with food 
and clothing are quickly and surely recognized. Yet 

even much later than this, many mistakes are made. The 
child of a year and a half will try to pick up a sunbeam 
from the floor, to grasp his own reflection in the mirror, to 
pull a stream of water flowing from a sponge, as though it 
were a string. Even at the close of his second year, pic- 
torial representation is a great mystery to him, and he pre- 
fers the reality. Sigismund's boy, at two years, called a 
circle " plate, " a square " bonbon, " and his father's shadow 
"papa;" and Preyer's boy, much later than this, called a 
square "window," a triangle "roof," a circle "ring," and 
several dots on the paper "little birds." Pollock tells of a 
girl nearly two years old, who, on seeing a row of dots on a 
printed page, thus , cried out, "' Oh, pins, " and 



20 THE PSYCHOLOGY OP CHILDHOOD. 

made repeated attempts to pick them out ; and the girl 
F. was observed one day trjdng to "pick up" her father's 
white protruding cutt' from what she supposed was the 
underlying coat-sleeve, as she attempted to grasp the cuff 
from that side, and seemed much surprised at her failure. 

II. Hearixg. 

The importance of hearing as a knowledge-giving sense 
would be difficult to overestimate. Besides being the chan- 
nel of a large part of our knowledge, and the medium of a 
vast amount of refined pleasure, the sense of hearing plays 
so large a role in the acquisition of language that a child 
who is perfectly deaf from birth, does not learn to speak. 

The Embryonic Ear. — According to Quain's Anatomy, 
the more important parts of the organ of hearing are formed 
by the involution of the epiblast from the surface of the 
head, in the region of the medulla oblongata, by which a 
depression is produced. This depression gradually deepen- 
ing, and its outer aperture becoming narrowed, a flask-like 
cavity is formed, which constitutes on each side the prima?y 
auditory vesicle. 

The possibility of hearing in the intra-uterine stage, 
depends on two things, viz., the presence of adequate stimuli, 
and the permeability of those passages and nerve tracts by 
which sensations of sound are mediated. As to the first 
condition, there are probably numerous sounds which might 
produce sensations of hearing in the foetus, such as the 
visceral movements of the mother and those of the foetus 
itself. Hearing at this stage is, however, highly improb- 
able, because the second condition is not fulfilled. The 
drum cavity is filled with a viscous mass, which probably 
prevents the passage of the necessary sound- vibrations 



SENSATION. 21 

through the tympanum, even leaving out of account the 
complete absence of air at this period. The tympanum 
itself also has not, at this time, the perpendicular position 
which it afterwards assumes, and which seems necessary for 
the transmission of sound, but lies rather in a horizontal 
situation. 

Hearing ix the New-borx. — Czerney, in his experi- 
ments as to the comparative soundness of sleep at different 
times, was unable to use a sound stimulus with new-born 
children as he did with adults, because of their failure to 
react to sound-impressions; he was obliged, in their case, 
to resort to electrical stimulation. Kroner assured him- 
self by many experiments that the child, in the first week 
of his life, reacts distinctly to strong sound-impressions, 
and the very careful experiments of Moldenhauer confirm 
this conclusion. Mrs. Talbot says of one child that he was 
sensible to sound three hours after his birth. Sigismund 
saw the first evidences of hearing much later. ^ Perez thinks 
there may be — through vibration — something correspond- 
ing to a rudimentary and general sense of hearing in the 
uterus. Champneys could not elicit any response — by 
starting or otherwise — during the first week, to any noise, 
however loud, unless accompanied by vibration other than 
air-vibration. Kussmaul utterly failed to produce any 
impression in the first days, no matter how loud or dis- 
cordant the noise. ^ He believes hearing sleeps most deeply 

1 "Nach einigen (drei bis aclit) Wochen sieht man das Kind bei 
plotzlichem Gerausche zusammenfahren. Da erkennt mann klar, dass 
jetzt audi fiir die wahrnehmende Seele, das Hephata ! gesprochen 
ist." " Kind und Welt," p. 27. 

2 " Mann kann vor den Oliren wachender Neugeborner in den ersten 
Tagen die starksten disharmonischen Gerausche machen, ohne dass sie 
davon beriihrt werden." 



22 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

of all the senses. But he quotes Herr Feldsbausch, assist- 
ant in midwifery at the hospital in Jena, to show that there 
was hearing in many cases from the third day. Genzmer 
found that almost all the children on whom he experimented, 
on the first day, or certainly on the second, reacted to 
impressions of sound; but the reaction was unequal in dif- 
ferent children. Dr. Deneke found one child of six hours 
who started and closed his eyes tighter at the sound of two 
metallic covers striking togetlier; wdiile Preyer observed one 
who did not react at all on the third day, and another who, 
on the sixth day, reacted only very slightly. Sully noticed, 
on the second day, a distinct movement of the head in 
response to sound, and this is confirmed by Professor Bald- 
win. Burdach declares the child hears nothing during the 
first week. 

On these the following observations are in place, and may 
help to the understanding of the discrepancies : 

(1) There is unanimity on one point: No one has suc- 
ceeded in proving that any child hears anything during the 
first hours. This corresponds to the physiological facts that 
the eustachian tube is not permeable, nor does air find its 
way into the middle ear until some little time after respira- 
tion has begun. Lesser's experiments show that the foetal 
conditions of the middle ear may indeed persist in the 
prematurely born more than twenty hours. 

(2) Starting in response to a loud noise may often be 
caused by vibrations which affect the whole body, and act 
as a nervous shock. Children are known to start on the 
slamming of a door, when they make no such response to a 
voice, however loud. No doubt, in the first case, the child 
feels the jar rather than hears the noise. 

(3) Any further discrepancies not resolved by these two 
considerations, may be accounted for by the differences in 
maturity of different children at birth, and the varying 



SENSATION. 23 

rapidity with which the physiological adjustments are com- 
pleted. Generalizing, we may say that the period of begin- 
ning to hear varies, according to these circumstances, from 
the sixth hour to the third week. If, in the fourth week, a 
healthy, normal child makes no response to a loud sound 
behind him, there is reason to fear that he will be deaf and 
dumb. 

As regards localization of sounds, the ear does not render 
very much service in this, on account of its comparative 
immobility. Even in the adult, a sound made in the room 
above is with great difficulty distinguished from a sound 
made in the room below, unless some other circumstance 
enter in to assist in the determination. 

Champneys' child, on the fourteenth day, turned his head 
in the direction of his mother's voice, but this was probably 
due as much to feeling her breath upon his cheek as to 
hearing, since he did not do it when her face was turned in 
another direction. Leaving this observation, then, out of 
account, I find that the period in which children are first 
observed to turn the head in the direction of sounds, extends 
from the tenth week (or the fifth week, according to 
Alcott) to the seventeenth week. One child sometimes 

turned towards a sound in the sixteenth week.^ Another, 
at four months and ten days, "always turned his head 
exactly in the right direction." A third turned his head 

towards a sound for the first time in the eleventh week, and 
by the sixteenth week this movement had assumed all the 
certainty of a reflex, and still another, when five months 
old, on hearing the rumbling of the cars in the street, knew 
to which window to go to look for them. Schultze 

observed that active hearing, with attention, began after the 

1 It is recorded by Miss Shinn that a cliild during her second 
month began to look at the piano keys as the source of the sound. 



24 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

lirst half-year. Not only are there these differences among 
different children, but in the same child the accuracy of 
localization becomes greater by exercise. The differences in 
time, noted above, are doubtless in part due to variations in 
the rapidity of the physiological development of the ear. 

By the end of the fourth month the normal child has 
made considerable progress in the understanding of the 
meaning of sounds, i.e., in the interpretation of sounds by 
their timbre. I find here also great differences in the 
results of the observations. Tiedemann's son took notice 
of gestures on the thirteenth day. Words would stop his 
tears or call them forth, according to the tone in which they 
were uttered. Another child, sixteen days old, would some- 
times leave off crying when his mother spoke soothingly to 
him. At two months he distinguished between the loud 
bark of a dog and a coaxing yelp, being frightened by the 
former, but quickly soothed by the latter. A girl of three 
and a half months " knows when she is being scolded." 
On the other hand, out of one hundred children observed, 
Dr. Demme found only two who, at three and a half months, 
knew their parents' voices. Another observer reports 

that at two months there was no apparent appreciation of 
ordinary sounds, but children of four and a half months 
sometimes recognized a voice. 

These differences are, no doubt, to some extent, due to 
heredit}^, and to some extent produced artificially in the 
life of the individual by exercise. The average child appar- 
ently begins to comprehend the meaning of tones from the 
second to the fourth month. 

A very interesting point in connection with the subject 
of the child's hearing, is his 2J0wer to appreciate music. So 
intimately "associated is it with the development of his 
aesthetic nature, that it deserves the careful study of the 
psychologist and the educator. 



SENSATION. 25 

There are two chief sources of pleasure in music: the 
rhythmical movement, and the melody — the time and the 
tune. With regard to the first, it seems safe to say that 
no healthy, normal child, after the first few weeks, fails to 
appreciate rhythmical movements. At sixteen days one boy 
was soothed by the gentle, regular movements of the mother. 
These first musical impressions have a physiological explana- 
tion. There seems almost to be a sense of rhythm. The 
succession of notes produces a flow of blood to the brain, 
and its energetic excitation redounds in lively sentiments 
and animated movements. Thus music responds to that 
need of muscular activity so strong in the child. The social 
instinct also enters here: the child takes more delight in 
noise and movement when some one is at hand to participate. 

With regard to the second point, the opinion may safely 
be ventured that no healthy, normal child is entirely lacking 
in musical "ear." I find no record of any child, who has 
been carefully observed, being utterly deficient in apprecia- 
tion of musical harmonies. In the vast majority of cases 
the opposite is the case. Children almost always, from a 
very early age, show a lively interest in music. In one 
observed case, a child of one month manifested delight in 
singing and playing. Sometimes children only two weeks 

old have been observed to stop the motions of their limbs, 
and apparently listen, when a piano was played in another 
room. From six or seven weeks onward, and especially 

in the latter half of the first year, the child's pleasure in 
music is often shown by a sort of accompanying muscular 
movements, which he seems unable to repress. The mother's 
song of lullaby is keenly appreciated, and somewhat later 
is even given back b}^ the child in a most charming infant 
warble. The emotional element in the music is often keenly 
distinguished. Dr. Brown says of one of the infants ob- 
served by her in New York city, that when only five and a 



26 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

half months old, he would cry when his mother played a 
plaintive air; but would stop at once, and begin to jump 
and toss his arms about and laugh, if she struck into a 
lively melody. There seems to be, as some one has said, a 
sympathy between the ear and the voice which antedates 
all experience, and which is even to a large extent indepen- 
dent of normal brain -endowment. Even idiotic children 
(provided they are not deaf) who can speak only a few 
simple words and syllables, are able to sing, and in singing 
they employ other words besides those generally at their 
command. While all this is true, it should also be remem- 
bered that the child's cerebral and mental endowment is 
exceedingly plastic, and that consequently sounds which at 
first were disagreeable to him soon become tolerable and even 
pleasant. He accommodates himself to all sorts of noises 
with far greater facility than the adult, and soon comes to 
take great delight in any sort of rude, banging, grating 
sounds, especially if they are his own production. Hence 
there is no sense in the education of which greater care 
should be taken than the sense of hearing. As already 
said, probably all normal children are born with a capacity 
for musical appreciation, though of course not all in the 
same degree. Now in the early period — during the first 
four or five years of life — it is very easy to cultivate this 
musical capacity or to destroy it. If the child hears, every 
day, rasping, grating and discordant noises, he will come 
very soon to like these as well as the most harmonious. It 
lies within the power of parents and teachers so to cultivate 
the child's capacity in this respect as to minister in an 
incalculable degree to the happiness of his life and the 
purity of his character.^ 

1 " Comme I'a dit si bien le poete, I'oreille est le chemin du coeur. 
Eiivelopper I'enfant d'une atmosphere de sons doux, tendres et rejouis- 
sants, c'est travailler a son bonheur actuel, et c'est faire beaucoup pour 
son liumeur et sa inoralite futures." 



SENSATIOK. 27 

III. Touch. 

Touch has been called the universal sense, because, while 
sight, hearing, etc., have each a special, local end-organ, 
touch has its end-organs in every part of the body, number- 
less nerves of this sense communicating with the brain from 
every portion of the skin. The importance of the touch- 
sense is, therefore, obvious. Some have gone so far as to 
call it the fundamental sense, and have endeavored to reduce 
all the others to it. Without going this far, we may 
readily recognize its importance in the mental development 
of the child, from recorded cases of children who, from birth 
or from an early age, have been deprived of the other senses, 
or the most important of them, and who have, nevertheless, 
almost by touch alone, reached a remarkable degree of in- 
tellectual and moral attainment. The field of the present 
inquiry is covered by three questions : 

(1) As to the first beginnings of touch experiences. 
(2) As to the comparative delicacy of different parts of 
the body. (3) As to the education of touch perception. 

(1) All observers concur in the opinion that the sense of 
touch is exercised to a considerable degree in the foetal 
stage of existence. Cabanis expressed the opinion that the 
sense of touch is the only one that furnishes the child in 
the first days with distinct perceptions, "probably because 
it is the only one that has had any exercise before birth." 
Kussmaul believes this sense is aroused in the embryonic 
period by contact with the surrounding matrix. Perez holds 
that there are indistinct tactile sensations during the intra- 
uterine life. Preyer believes touch-sensations are present at 
this time, though of far less intensity than in the subsequent 
life. Sully speaks of touch as the first sense to manifest 
itself. Erasmus Darwin expressed the belief that the foetus 
receives through this sense some representation of its own 



28 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

figure, and of the uterus itself. This opinion is concurred 
in by nearly all the authorities quoted in this connection 
'here, and has been placed beyond doubt by the experiments 
of Kussmaul and Genzmer on prematurely born children, in 
whom they found the sense of touch already in full opera- 
tion immediately after birth, though for a considerable time 
it is not accompanied by clear and definite objective refer- 
ence, but is only a subjective feeling. 

(2) Differences in sensibility to touch impressions among 
the different parts of the body are not so great at first as 
they afterwards become. In the uterus, the surrounding 
medium has been homogeneous ; but from the time of birth 
onward, it becomes more and more varied, so that those 
parts of the body which are exposed to contact with the 
external world become relatively blunted in delicacy, while 
those which continue to be more or less protected — such as 
the eye and the tongue — retain moie nearly their original 
sensitiveness. Nevertheless, the differences in delicacy 
among the different parts at the very first are surprisingly 
great. 

The upper surface of the tongue is exceedingly sensitive. 
Kussmaul introduced a small glass rod into the mouths of 
children just born, eliciting prompt responsive movements, 
which varied in character according to the part touched. 
When the rod touched the tongue near the tip, the lips at 
once protruded, the sides of the tongue curled up around the 
rod, and sucking movements followed. When the rod came 
into contact with the back part of the tongue near the root, 
all the responsive movements — expression of face, mouth 
motions, etc. — indicated "nausea." (Similar results were 
obtained by Kroner and Genzmer.) No doubt we have here 
a sensori-motor reflex established before birth. The same 
is true in the case of the lips, which share with the tongue 
an extreme delicacy from the first. Even the lightest touch 



SEKSATIOl^. 29 

of a feather produced sucking movements of the lips on the 
sixth day, and gentle stroking of the lips produced the 
same result on the fifth day, and even on the first day. 

One of the most sensitive parts of the body to touch 
impressions is the mucous membrane which lines the nostrils. 
This was observed to be sensitive on the first day of the 
child's life. " Tickling of the inner surfaces of the wings 
of the nose with a feather calls from children first of all 
winking of the eyelids, stronger and earlier on the tickled 
side than on the other; if the irritation be increased, the 
child not only knits the eyebrows, but moves the head and 
the hands, which latter it carries to the face." It appears, 
however, from the observations of the same authority, that 
this sensitiveness of the mucous membrane is formed only 
towards the end of the period of gestation, since similar 
experiments made on children born in the seventh month 
were without result. 

Certainly next in order of delicacy — if indeed they should 
not have been placed earlier — come the various parts of 
the eye: the lashes, the conjunctiva and the cornea. Of 
these three, the lashes are considered by Kussmaul and 
Kroner the most sensitive to touch impressions. The former 
says : " The eyelashes are extraordinarily sensitive to even 
the faintest disturbances. If the child, when awake, has 
the eyes open, one can press with a glass rod even to the 
cornea before it will close the eyes ; but should only one of 
the little lashes be disturbed in the least, this closing of 
the eyes will take place at once. The disturbance of the 
eyelids is not so efficacious by far; it will by no means be 
answered every time by eye-winking, as in the case of the 
cilia." He goes on to say that if one should blow through 
a small tube of twisted paper upon the face of an infant, 
winking will take place only when the stream of air has 
disturbed one of the cilia. Genzmer and Preyer differ from 



80 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

Kussmaul here, holding that the cornea is more sensitive 
than the lashes. These facts are interesting as bearing on 
the question of priority between sight and touch in the eye. 
It has been frequently noticed that the child does not for a 
good while blink when a finger is thrust at the eye, provided 
it does not come into contact with it. Touch-reflexes seem, 
therefore, to be developed earlier than sight-reflexes. 

If the tip of the nose be touched, both eyes will be shut 
tight. If one side be touched, the child will generally close 
the eye on that side. If the irritation be increased, both 
eyes will be closed and the head drawn somewhat back. 
This is an inborn defensive reflex. 

If one tickles the palm of the hand of a new-born child, 
the fingers will close round the object with which it was 
tickled. The skin of the face seems even more sensitive 

still. On tickling the sole of the foot, active reflex move- 
ments follow, such as bending the knees and hip-joints, 
curling and spreading the toes, etc. The reaction time is 
longer, however, in infants than in adults, sometimes 
amounting to two seconds. Slaps also are more effective 
than pricks, some children showing comparative indifference 
to the latter. A greater number of nerve ends are stimu- 
lated by a slap, hence the more speedy reaction. The 
greater sensitiveness of the adult to sense impressions in 
general is due to his more advanced cerebral development, 
and not to any superiority in cutaneous or nervous adjust- 
ment. 

The other parts of the body are, speaking roughly, sensi- 
tive to touch impressions in the following order; The audi- 
tory canal (in the second quarter of the first year, the child 
observed by Preyer would instantly stop crying and become 
very quiet, if one's little finger were placed gently in the 
ear cavity), forearm, leg, shoulder, breast, abdomen, back, 
and upper part of thigh. 



SENSATION. 31 

(3) The susceptibility of the sense of touch to education 
is very great, as may be seen from the attainments of those 
who are born blind, the proficiency they attain in reading 
by touch, etc. As a knowledge-giving sense, it stands very 
high, contributing much to the child's first knowledge of 
the external world, and, together with sight and the muscu- 
lar feelings, to his first comprehension of space and time 
relations. It aids greatly also in his acquirement of the 
notion of self — this probably at first through touching 
some portion of his own body, and then some external 
thing, and feeling a difference between the resulting sensa- 
tions. But even before active touch has thus begun, the 
foundations of the child's education are laid in passive touch 
experiences, which from the beginning not only yield him 
pleasure and pain, but, being more frequent as well as more 
varied in their operations, contribute earlier and more 
largely than any of the other sense experiences to the 
development of his faculties, and to his gradual acquain- 
tanceship with the world of objects by which he is sur- 
rounded.^ 

IV. Taste. 

According to Sigismund, taste is the first of all the senses 
to yield clear perceptions, to which memory is attached. 
Not only is the exercise of this sense connected from the 
first with the child's most primitive needs and their satis- 
faction, but it is more than probable that, even in the 
embryonic stage, taste has been to some degree aroused by 
swallowing the amniotic fluid. 

Numerous careful experiments show that the child is 
capable of bona fide sensations of taste in the earliest 

1 On this subject see Perez, "Education Morale des le Berceau," 
Chap. y. 



32 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

moments of life; and that, though he is for some time more 
obtuse and more uncertain in this respect than the adult, 
yet when a sapid object is introduced into his mouth, the 
resulting sensation really takes place by way of the gusta- 
tory bulbs and nerves, and is not merely a species of touch 
sensation, as some have held. 

Kussmaul experimented on twenty children, during the 
first day of life — some of them in the very first moments 
— with the following results: Solutions of sugar and of 
quinine being introduced into the mouth by means of a hair 
pencil — the mixture being warmed so that the feeling of 
temperature should not affect the result — the children 
responded with "the same mimetic movements which we 
designate among grown people as the facial expressions of 
sweet and bitter. '^ They responded to the sugar by pro- 
truding the lips in a spout-like form, pressing the tongue 
between them, sucking and swallowing. On the contrary, 
Avhen the quinine was introduced, the visage was distorted, 
the eyes closed, the tongue protruded, and choking move- 
ments were made, accompanied by the expulsion of the fluid 
and active secretion of saliva. "Sometimes the head was 
actively shaken, as in the case of grown people when 
attacked by nausea." These results were obtained also in 
premature children, showing that this reflex arc is capable 
of performing its functions before birth. He adds, however, 
that he found great individual differences among children, 
some being far less responsive than others. Sometimes 
also the children seemed to make a mistake at first, as they 
occasionally responded to sugar by the mimetic movement 
for bitter, but this was probably only surprise at the new 
sensation, as they very soon changed it for the correct ex- 
pression. He found also by these experiments that only the 
tip and edges of the tongue represent the tasting compass, 
the middle of the back part yielding no sensations of taste. 



SENSATION. 38 

Genzmer, experimenting on twenty -five children, most of 
whom were just born, obtained results substantially agreeing 
with those of Kussn^aul. He noticed, however, that in 
many cases the introduction of an attenuated solution of 
quinine was responded to by sucking movements, while 
stronger solutions were rejected with the mimetic for 
"bitter," showing that taste sensibility is weaker at this 
age than in the adult. ^ 

Preyer agrees with the above deductions in every respect, 
and adds: "It is certain from all observations that the 
newly-born distinguish the sensations of taste that are 
decidedly different from one another, — the sweet, sour and 
bitter." His boy, on the first day of life, licked pow- 

dered cane sugar, whereas he licked nothing else. Later, 
on receiving a strange food, he often shuddered and dis- 
torted his face merely on account of the novelty of the sen- 
sation, for, in the case of an agreeable sensation, he directly 
afterwards desired it, and received it with an expression of 
satisfaction. He concludes that the association of certain 
mimetic contractions of muscles with certain sensations of 
taste is inborn. 

The development of taste-perception in the infant is in- 
teresting and important. The pleasures and pains of taste 
play a large part in his early education. The mouth is 
soon made the test organ to which all objects are carried, 
and by which their qualities are ascertained. Preyer's boy, 
on the second day, took without hesitation cow's milk 
diluted with water, which, on the fourth day, he stoutly 
refused. During his sixth month, he began to refuse to 
take the breast (which was offered him only in the night), 
because the sweetened cow's milk, which he had taken in 



1 These results are corroborated also by Kroner, Fehling and several 
others. 



84 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

the daytime, was somewhat sweeter. From this time 
onward, and especially after weaning, his discrimination 
became much nicer, and by the fourth and fifth years he 
had become so " fastidious " that even the sight of certain 
articles of diet would call forth from him the mimetic 
movements for nausea, choking, etc. 

Perez says the sense of taste is very slightly developed in 
the new-born, yet it exists. A child observed by him dis- 
tinguished milk from sweetened water, and sweetened water 
from plain water, by the taste. Yet there are great differ- 
ences of gustatory sensitiveness among children. In some 
cases, a child of six months has been induced to take bitter 
medicine by a change in the color. On the other hand, a 
child of two and a half months refused its bottle because the 
milk was not sweetened. Most children begin very early 
to detect the acid taste in certain substances.^ 

Yet in general, children's tastes change very easily, and 
hence are highly susceptible to education in almost every 
direction. Moreover, there are differences in the same child 
at different times: the state of the health, the temperature 
of the food (which, according to Champneys, is of more 
consequence than the taste itself), and many other circum- 
stances entering in to disturb the gustatory equilibrium. 



V. Smell. 

Taste and smell are so closely associated that they might 
almost be considered together. The savour of substances 
depends, to a large extent, on their odor. These senses 
resemble each other in the comparative diffuseness of their 
perceptions, and in the fact that their sensations are more 



1 Dr. Brown thinks this is the first taste to be recognized. 



SENSATION. 35 

persistent, and, therefore, less clearly distinguishable suc- 
cessively than those of the higher senses. 

In order to sensations of smell, there must be air in the 
nasal cavities; hence there can be no exercise of this sense 
before respiration begins ; none, therefore, before the begin- 
ning of the post-natal life. 

Careful tests upon new-born children, however, show that 
they are susceptible to strong odors in the first hours of life. 
Eecords are at hand of tests made on about fifty children, 
most of whom were less than a day, some only fifteen min- 
utes old. The tests were made with asafoetida, aqua foetida, 
and oleum dipelli. Care was taken to experiment on sleep- 
ing as well as waking children, in order to avoid mistakes 
in interpreting the gestures and facial expressions. The 
result was that the children became uneasy, knit the eyelids 
more firmly together, contracted the muscles of the face, 
moved the head and arms, and, finally, awoke, sometimes 
even with crying. On the removal of the odor, they would 
fall asleep again. These results were also obtained in the 
case of eight months children, but not on those of a still 
more premature birth. 

With the child's growth, progress is normally made in 
power of discrimination by the sense of smell, though more 
slowly than in the case of the higher senses. A little girl 
of eighteen hours obstinately refused a nipple on which a 
little petroleum had been rubbed, but readily took the other. 
Another child refused cow's milk when it ivas brought near 
him. Another, at thirteen days, refused certain medicines, 
being guided solely by their odor. Decisive discrimination 
of pleasant from unpleasant odors, with rejection of the 
latter, and appreciation of the former, has been observed in 
numerous instances from the early part of the second month 
on; and during the second half of the first year, this dis- 
crimination has become, with some children, very marked 



36 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

indeed, a lively enjoyment of the scent of flowers often 
being noticeable from this time on. 

With all this, however, the sense of smell is far less acute 
in children than in adults. They often appear unaffected 
by odors which would be exceedingly unpleasant to the 
grown person. Further, their sensibility to smells very 
quickly becomes blunted by repetition or continuance, as is 
the case, to a less degree, with all persons. When the 
experiments with asafoetida, etc., described above, were 
repeated, no responses could be elicited after the first or 
second trial. Even after the child has become keenly ap- 
preciative of odors, he seems utterly to lack that dexterity 
in the management of the organ which is so noticeable in 
the case of taste. Children well on in the second year of 
life may be observed to carry a fragrant flower to the 
mouth — and even into it — instead of to the nose. The 
same awkwardness is seen in the management of the breath. 
When learning to smell, they invariably exhale with great 
vigor at first, but require considerable practice before they 
can inhale the odors. 

Man seems greatly inferior to many of the lower animals 
in regard to smell. A kitten, three days old, " spat " at a 
hand which had been licked by a dog — a remarkable 
instance of the persistence and transmission of what Mr. 
Darwin calls "serviceable associated movements." The 
keenness of scent in dogs and horses, and many wild ani- 
mals, is proverbial. In man, on the other hand, this sense 
stands very low in the knowledge-giving scale. Even in 
mature life, it gives but little information respecting the 
external world, and that of an uncertain character. In the 
child, it is concerned chiefly with the recognition of food. 
But it may well be that if this sense were brought into as 
constant requisition as the sense of sight or hearing, and as 
much care bestowed upon its education, very important 



> SENSATION. 37 

results might take place in the way of developing a smell- 
sensibility.^ 

VI. TeMPEKATUPwE. 

There are two classes of thermic sensations : 1st, passive, 
subjective and general, as when we say " I am cold " or " I 
am warm." 2nd, active, objective and local, as when we 
touch a hot or cold object and pronounce it hot or cold. 
Both are important in the child's development, but the 
second sort lends itself to experiment more readily than 
the first. 

The sense of temperature should not be confounded with 
the sense of touch; for, though, like touch, it is universal, 
having its end organs scattered all over the body, yet the 
feeling in the one case is quite distinct from that in 
the other. 

With regard to the possibility of sensations of tempera- 
ture prior to birth, Luys expresses himself as follows : " We 
know indeed that from this period (the fourth month of 
pregnancy) the foetus is sensitive to the action of cold, and 
that we can develop its spontaneous movements by applying 
a cold hand to the abdomen of the mother." Perez also is 
of the opinion that the foetus experiences certain cutano- 
thermal sensations from about this time. Preyer takes the 
opposite ground, arguing for the homogeneity of the uterine 
temperature, and the consequent absence of any possibility 
of comparing sensations. 

At all events, in the newly -born, the sense of warmth and 
cold develops very promptly. The gradual cooling, on com- 
ing into contact with the external world, the atmosphere, 

1 Mantegazza complains that we aid our eyes with spectacles, micro- 
scopes and telescopes, and our ears with trumpets, while the nose is 
entirely neglected, "Die Hygiene der Sinne." 



38 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

the clothing, the bath, — all contribute to the speedy differ- 
entiation of thermic sensations, and to the perception of 
temperature. Genzmer, in experimenting upon about twenty 
new-born children, found that there was active withdrawal 
of the parts — palm of hand, sole of foot, cheek, etc. — to 
which the cold object was applied. His experiments are 
not entirely satisfactory, however, since sufficient care was 
not taken to exclude touch sensations from participating. 

Satisfactory observations as to the development of the 
temperature sense are very scarce. Preyer found that the 
warm bath was enjoyed almost from the first, but the cold 
bath was disliked until the child learned by experience its 
refreshing effects. The lips, tongue and mucous membrane 
of the mouth were surprisingly sensitive to warmth and 
cold, even in the first days. The child would refuse milk 
of a temperature only slightly higher or lower than that of 
the mother. Still, on the whole, the infant suffers less 
from extremes of temperature than the adult, in whose case 
the faculty of judgment enters to aggravate the sensation. 

An interesting point in this connection is the gradual 
variation between the " neutral point " in the tongue and 
cavity of the mouth, on the one hand, and the external parts, 
such as the hand, on the other. In the former it remains 
through life almost the same as before birth, while in the 
latter it gradually lowers by contact with the surrounding 
medium. 

VII. Organic Sensations. 

By this is usually meant those comparatively vague and 
general feelings of comfort and discomfort arising from cer- 
tain conditions of the viscera, as distinguished from defi- 
nitely located feelings resulting from excitation of the special 
Hunger and thirst may serve as examples of 



SENSATION. 39 

visceral discomfort, and the feeling of satiety that follows 
the taking of nourishment as an example of visceral comfort. 
We shall also consider here feelings of pain in general, 
whether produced hy external or internal stimuli. 

The question of the possibility of pain experiences before 
birth may perhaps be considered settled by Preyer's investi- 
gations on foetal guinea pigs and dogs (see " Physiology of 
the Embryo"). He obtained reactions which showed this 
sensibility to be present. The reactions, however, were 
very much slower than in the subsequent stages of life; 
showing either that the sensibility to pain is much lower in 
the foetal stage than subsequently, or that pain reflexes are 
not firmly established at this time. Other investigators 
have found indeed that in the case of the very immature 
foetus, the prick of a pin produced no response, although in 
the mature child, distinct reactions took place, by cries and 
movements, to strong mechanical or electrical stimulation. 

The fact that the new-born child is capable of pleasure 
and pain also corroborates the view that his physiological 
apparatus is already adjusted before birth to this sort of 
experience. 

Kussmaul has made some observations which go to show 
that very soon after birth, from the sixth hour on, but vary- 
ing much in different children, the infant " is accustomed to 
betray distinctly that it is visited by a sensation which we 
must interpret as hunger or thirst, probably a mixture of 
both." This feeling is expressed by uneasy motions of the 
head and hands, sucking movements, and crying. One child, 
in the sixth hour of her life, would turn her head with sur- 
prising quickness, first to one side and then to the other, in 
order to take into the mouth and suck the finger with which 
the observer stroked her on each side of her face in succes- 
sion, though he took care that in stroking the finger should 
not touch her lips. 



40 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

Prever observes that hunger and thirst assert themselves 
in sucking movements from the first. Very soon the cry of 
liunger is distinguishable from the cry of pain, being car- 
ried on with more intervals and in a lower tone, while the 
tongue is held in a peculiar manner, being drawn back and 
spread out. The hungry infant he also observed to move 
its head from side to side in a way not seen in any other 
circumstances. Gradually the child becomes relatively less 
absorbed in the satisfaction of hunger. From the fifth 
month, he can be diverted from eating by new noises and 
movements. From the tenth month, his eating is not so 
hurried and greedy. This is parth* owing to the fact that 
at this age he takes more food at a time, the stomach being 
very much larger than at first. 

For the rest, but few observations have been made. The 
child experiences organic sensations of pleasure and pain 
(the pain possibly predominating in the earliest period) in 
connection with the digestive, respiratory and circulatory 
processes : pleasure in their normal functioning, pain when 
the organs are fatigued or diseased. Pleasures in general 
are expressed by the widely open and *' swimming " eyes, by 
the smile, — which, according to Darwin, occurred for the 
first time as a real smile on the forty-fifth day, — and by 
"crowing," joyful tones of voice; pains hy tightly closed 
eyes, mouth drawn down at the corners, and later by the 
quadrangular form of the mouth in crying, while the cry 
itself varies according to the cause. The child is much 
more easily fatigued than the adult, and during the first few 
days passes most of the time in sleep. 

YIII. MuscuLAK Feelings. 

"We assume that in the normal condition all muscular 
movements are accompanied by muscular feelings. It is a 



SENSATION. 41 

sort of *' internal touch " spread all over the body, and 
intimately associated with locomotion and prehension, with 
expansion and contraction, witli pressure, weight, resist- 
ance, etc. It also includes the " feeling of the state of the 
muscles when at rest." So closely connected with the 
child's activity, its bearing on the rise of will is obvious. 

That the child's muscles are called into play during the 
later months of his ante-natal life, in a great variety of 
movements, is so fully established as to require here only a 
passing word. It has been supposed by some that the foetus 
is incited to muscular movements by the tedium of his 
unchanged position. It seems better, however, to suppose 
that now, as at a later time, there is an instinctive necessity 
for movement. The child is exceedingly active. To move 
his muscles is for him an absolute necessit}', and the wisest 
methods in child training are those which recognize this 
fact, and, instead of repressing his activity, direct it into 
the best channels. 

Though muscular feelings are present thus early, they are 
probably very vaguely apprehended by the child during the 
first month of his, life. By the end of the third month, 
however, a vast number of these feelings have become asso- 
ciated with visual sensations, by means of coordinated 
movements of the neck, arms and eyes. About this time 
also begins the discernment of weight, though the apprecia- 
tion and comparison of different weights are probably later 
attainments. The healthy child experiences the keenest 
pleasure in the exercise of his muscles. One observed case 
may stand for many. A little boy, in his fourth month, 
was observed to hold his toy rabbit up by the ears, crowing 
proudly, in evident enjoyment of the effort. It is likely, 

as Ferrier says, that the muscular feeling of effort, by which 
weight is discerned, is first discriminated in connection with 
the movements of respiration. 



42 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

From about the middle of the first year, the healthy child 
develops a remarkable propensity to seize, lift^ pi^H? and 
otherwise handle all objects that come within his reach. 
This is to be attributed ]Dartly to natural curiosity, but more 
particularly at this early period to the constitutional need 
of exercising the muscles, to which he yields almost uncon- 
sciously. As soon as he is able to walk, the range of his 
muscle-activity is vastly extended, and from this time forth, 
his experiences in this connection play a large and important 
part in his education.^ 

1 For further remarks on muscular mcvement, vide infra, Chap. IV. 



CHAPTER II. 

INTELLECT. 

Most of the phenomena described in the preceding pages 
involve thonght in a greater or less degree; yet in the 
earliest experiences, mental activity is at a minimum; the 
affective predominates over the presentative, and the repre- 
sentative occupies but a very small place. Yet it seems 
incorrect to say, with Xasse, that " mind comes first at birth, 
and the first breath is the earliest mark of intellect;" or 
witli Heyfelder, that the first cry is the sign of awakening 
mind; or with Karl Vogt, that the newly-born possesses no 
trace of intelligence. Kussmaul seems nearer the truth in 
the following: "It cannot be doubted that man comes into 
the world with an idea — a dark one to be sure — of an outer 
something, with a certain idea of space, with the possibility 
of localizing certain touch sensations, and with a certain 
mastery over his movements. How can it otherwise be 
explained that the hungry child, before it is suckled, not 
only seeks nourishment, but seeks it in that region where 
its sense of touch during the search is actively excited?' 
These astonishing actions can only be comprehended under 
the following suppositions : First, that the child has already 
gained the dim idea of an outer something which is able to 
remove the unpleasant sensation of hunger or thirst, and 
which, to that end, must come through the mouth; secondly, 
that he is able to decide the place from which the sensation 
of stroking came; and thirdly, that he has already learned 



44 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

to turn the head voluntarily to the one side or to the 
other." 

It is not possible, within the present limits, either to give 
a detailed exposition of the nature of the thought process, 
or to trace the intellectual development on into the maturer 
years. For these the reader is referred to the numerous 
standard works on psychology in general. Here we can only 
attempt to collate facts calculated to throw light on the first 
budding of the intelligence, and to trace each phenomenon 
only to that stage at which it may be said to be fairly 
"under way." The intimate relation between thought and 
language also makes it advisable to postpone much that 
might be said here, until we come to the consideration of the 
latter topic. ^ 

Observation of intellectual development is hampered by 
two difficulties, which render great caution necessary. In 
the first place, the combined influence of heredity and 
environment produces such wide individual differences 
among children, that no general conclusions can be safely 
expressed until a very large number of cases have been 
observed. (Certainly nothing exhaustive or final can be said 
at the present time.) In the second place, even the most 
careful observer, watching one child, is apt to be misled by 
certain deceptive appearances, and to give the child credit 
for a good deal that he does not really know. " They do 
clever things, and say brilliant words, by imitation and 
accident, not knowing the meaning of them." In this 

1 The relation of thought and language has perhaps never been 
more aptly expressed than by Sir W. Hamilton in the following : 
" Language is to the mind precisely what the arch is to the tunnel. 
The power of thinking and the power of excavation are not dependent 
on the word in the one case, nor on the mason work in the other ; but 
without these subsidiaries neither process could be earned on beyond 
its rudimentary commencement." Lectures, Vol. 8, p. 138. 



INTELLECT. 45 

way many a child, supposed to be a prodigy, does not at all 
excel others, except in a quickness of imitation. When you 
want him to "show off," he fails you, simply because the 
words do not mean the same to him as they do to you, and 
his use of them is largely mechanical.^ The child's act may 
resemble ours outwardly, but the sentiment underneath the 
act may be very different. G. S. Hall says : " Not only are 
children prone to imitate others in their answers, without 
stopping to think and give an independent answer of their 
own, but they often love to seem wise, and, to make them- 
selves interesting, state what seems to interest us without 
reference to truth, divining the lines of our interest with a 
subtlety we do not suspect." In interpreting the phenomena 
here recorded, great care is necessary to avoid an inaccurate 
estimate of their intellectual value. 



I. Perceptiox. 

In the process of perception — which may be simply 
defined as "that act of the mind by which real external 
things become known through the senses " — there are 
three stages, distinguished from each other qualitatively, 
though not chronologically., First, the simple feelings of 
the senses are differentiated. Changes, quantitative and 
qualitative, are felt and known. The child recognizes the 
difference between a sweet taste and a bitter one, for 
example. He could not describe the difference even if he 
could speak, but is simply aiuare of it. Secondly, the sensa- 
tions are localized. A definite " whereness " is attributed 
to them. This involves the recognition of space properties 

lAs Rousseau says in Emile : " Un instant vous diriez : C'est un 
g^nie, et Pinstant d'apres : C'est un sot. Vous vous troniperiez 
toujours: C'est un enfant.'''' 



4(3 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

in objects, and opens up the vexed question of the origin of 
the idea of space, into which we cannot enter here. Thirdly, 
the manifold of seusation, thus differentiated and localized, 
is unified into a permanent whole, which we call the object. 
The child combines the scattered sensations, visual, tactual, 
olfactor}^, and sapid, into the perceived object, food. 

Taste Perceptioxs. — "The first centre of the child's 
psychic life is the mouth." Probably the first action is 

sucking, and later all objects are experimented upon by 
means of the lips and hands together. But even in the 
third month, the child is weak in power of comparison, and 
will suck an empty bottle as readily as a full one, until he 
finds it is empty by failure to extract anything from it. 
From the eighth day, a wry face was made at the sight of 
bitter medicine, and by the seventh week this wry face was 
accompanied by a gesture of refusal. At one month and 

five days, a dose of medicine was taken with visible repug- 
nance. The experiments of Kussmaul, already referred 
to, show that discrimination between tastes takes place from 
the first. It proceeds, generally, with considerable rapidity 
from the third month on, and by the tenth month various 
articles of diet are clearly known and distinguished from 
one another. Yet the child, like the adult, though in a 
greater degree, is subject to illusions of taste, through con- 
fusion of sapid with olfactory sensations, and with one 
another. 

Sight Perceptions. — During the first month, the child 
gives small evidence that he has any ideas of distance, or 
of his own body. At this age he will strike or scratch his 
own face. A girl of thirty days " seemed for an instant to 
have caught the reflected image of herself," but the next 
moment she became lost again in the surrounding objects of 



INTELLECT. 47 

the nursery. A boy, during liis second, month, gave the 

first sign of distinguishing external objects from himself, 
by reaching forward and grasping at them. About the same 
time he began api^arently to pay attention to the looks and 
gestures of others, and at six months he distinguished per- 
sons, without, however, having any clear ideas about them. 
When anything presented itself to him, he pointed his finger 
at it, to direct attention to it, and sometimes said all. 
From the beginning of his second ye^r, he rapidly advanced 
in power of discrimination, though chiefly among objects 
fitted to satisfy his needs. One of the objects earliest to be 
recognized — if not the very earliest — is the mother's face 
and form. Children give evidence of this recognition in the 
second or third month. A boy of seven months "surely 
recognized three persons," — his parents and the nurse. 
Another, at nine weeks, seemed to know his mother. No 

objects, not even the parents, are known at a distance. 
In the course of the first half-year, much improvement takes 
place in this direction. A child in his fifth month would 
no longer grasp at objects beyond his reach. Smiling at 

thfe image in the mirror has been noticed as early as the 
ninth week. 

" From the sensations of hearing and smell, there can be 
formed no representations in the first week." ISTear the 

end of the second month, one child gave evidence that he 
distinguished between tones of voice expressive of different 
emotions and sentiments. He allowed himself to be pacified 
by gentle tones. Another, in his third month, actively 

sought the direction of sound by turning his head. 

Owing to the w^eakness of the attention, and lack of 
experience, the young child falls into many illusions of 
sense-perception. A child of four months believes the 
image in the mirror is a real person, as is shown by his sur- 
prised look wdien he hears behind him the voice of the 



48 THE PSYCHOLOGi^ OF CHILDHOOD. 

individual to whom the reflection belongs. A boy of 

seven months put out both hands to pick up a very small 
piece of paper. At six months he mistook a flat dish for 

a globe, and seemed to believe all objects had bulk. The 
little girl F. tried one day to " pick up " a round picture, 
which was made to represent raised work, and another day 
she tried to Avalk on the water. I once heard a little girl 
of one year and a half call the moon a lamp, showing how 
false was her idea of its real distance and magnitude. 

Children are said to be peculiarly subject to illusions of 
hearing, though I have no examples to give. The imper- 
fection of their judgments by the muscular sense is shown 
by the fact that a cliild of three months cannot tell a full 
bottle from an empty one, by the weight alone. 

II. Memory. 

The power of retaining impressions, and recognizing them 
when reproduced, has a physiological as well as a psycho- 
logical aspect; the former consisting chiefly in the suscep- 
tibility of organic structures to receive impressions which 
are capable of a greater or less degree of permanency; the 
latter depending principally on the power of attention. 
Where the attention is actively directed towards the present 
sensation, that sensation is more easily and more surely 
reproduced in memory. 

Little children have but small power of attention; from 
the psychological side therefore, their memories are weak. 
Nearly all the experiences of the first two years of life, and 
the vast majority of those of the next four, are completely 
forgotten by most people.^ The cerebral structures in chil- 

1 "A writer in a recent English magazine declares that her own 
memory began at sixteen months." M. W. Wright in Babyhood^ 
Feb. 1891. 



INTELLECT. 49 

dren, however, are very impressible, so that, from the 
physiological point of view, the memory of childhood is 
potentially, at least, very strong. This probably accounts 
for the well-known fact that those experiences of childhood 
that are remembered, are more firmly fixed and persist 
longer than those of early manhood or middle age. Let the 
attention of a little child — which, be it observed, is weak 
in both directions, being as hard to ivithdraw from a present 
sensation as it is to direct toicards one — be enchained by 
some startling or fascinating experience, and an impression 
is made on his plastic mind, which can never be effaced.^ 
Old men recall the events of fifty years ago better than 
those of last year. 

The little child is capable of memories long before he has 
learned to speak. A little boy, six months old, whose hand 
had been slightly burnt by a hot vase, shrank back at the 
sight of this article a few days after. Certain faces, too, 

are recognized by children of this age, showing that they 
have memory-images of them. Strange faces, too, are known 
as strange, and distinguished from familiar ones; but the 
latter are not yet missed when absent. Sigismund gives 

an interesting case of memory in a boy about eight months 
old. AVhile in the bath he tried repeatedly to raise himself 
up by the edge of the tub, but in vain. Finally he suc- 
ceeded by grasping a handle, near which he accidentally 
fell. Next time he was put into the bath, he reached out 
immediately for the aforesaid handle and raised himself up 
in triumph. Memory of persons becomes strong by the end 
of the first year. A child of this age recognized her nurse, 
after six days' absence, "with sobs of joy." A boy some- 

1 My first sight of a locomotive will never, I believe, be effaced, or 
even bedimmed, in my memory, should I live for a century. To-day I 
can call it up with remarkable vividness, and with all its attendant 
circumstances clearly and definitely portrayed. 



50 THE PSYOPTOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

what younger knew Ids father after four days' absence, 
while another, seven months old, did not recognize his nurse 
after four weeks' absence, but when nineteen months old he 
knew his father, even at a distance, after two weeks' separa- 
tion. Another child, four months old, knew his nurse after 
four weeks, and at ten months he missed his parents, and 
was troubled by their absence. A boy of twenty-three 
months manifested keen delight on again seeing his play- 
things after an interval of eleven weeks; and when a year 
and a half old, was greatly disconcerted one day when sent 
to carry one towel to his mother, where he had been accus- 
tomed to carrying tn^o. Darwin's boy, at a little over 
three years of age, instantly recognized a portrait of his 
grandfather, "and mentioned a whole string of incidents 
which occurred at their last meeting, nearly six months 
previous," the matter not having been mentioned in the 
meantime. The little boy, E,., recognized a young lady who 
lives next door, after a few weeks of absence. He also 
knew me after nearly three weeks. He was then twenty- 
three months old. 

A boy one year and a half old heard some one say one day 
that another boy had fallen and hurt his leg. Some days 
after, the second boy came in, whereupon the first ran up to 
him, exclaiming, "Fall, hurt leg." A child of two years, 
whose mother had made him a toy sled out of a card, on 
receiving a postal card at the door some days after, ran with 
it to his mother,, crying," Mama, litten " (Schlitten, sled). 

New experiences call up memories of old experiences by 
association, and in this way events that occurred prior to 
the period of learning to speak, are remembered after that 
time. A little boy of my acquaintance related the following 
tale, the events of which took place" before he learned to 
speak: "Pussy kime on table; puli Nonie off {i.e., Nonie 
pulled her off); pussy katch Nonie face, hands too." This 



INTELLECT. 51 

was illustrated by gestures, showing the process of scratch- 
ing. Another boy, three years old, remembered per- 
fectly well and would imitate his own awkward attempts at 
speaking. 

A very interesting question in this connection is this: 
Which of the senses furnishes the most vivid and lasting 
memory-images? The first impulse would probably be to 
attribute the preeminence to sight, but in so doing, we might 
make a mistake. It is probable, as M. Queyrat seems to 
think, that the muscular sense is of paramount importance 
here. Children are full of action, and their psychic life 
is bound up with movement. If they are to develop, they 
must do something, and they remember what the}^ do, a 
thousand times better than what is told or shown to them. 
This is also true in adult life. Many persons study out 
loud. We remember what we ivrite, better than what we 
simply read. Pedagogy is now recognizing this as a great 
principle in education, and the whole kindergarten system 
is based upon it. 

In connection with hearing, the child remembers best 
some connected story which is helped out by gestures 
appealing to the eye. The little boy C, at twenty-five 
months, reproduced after his own fashion the story of Little 
Red Riding Hood (having heard it only once, and that the 
night before) with abundant gesture, and then laughed in 
great glee. 

An interesting experiment in this direction is reported 
by Baldwin in Science for May 2nd, 1890. The child was six 
and a half months old. Her nurse had been absent three 
weeks. On returning she first appeared before the child 
without speaking, then she spoke without appearing. In 
neither case was she recognized. But when she appeared 
again, and sang a familiar nursery rlr^me, the child recog- 
nized her with demonstrations of joy. This is a good 



52 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

example of the "summation of stimuli/' or the cooperation 
of different sensations, reinforcing each other, to produce a 
result which neither could accomplish by itself. 



III. Association. 

Memory and imagination proceed in accordance with the 
laws of association. The chief of these are resemblance, 
contiguity and contrast. The general principle of associa- 
tion has been expressed in this way: "When, for any 
reason, a part of an old mental movement is reinstated, 
there is a tendency for the whole movement to reinstate 
itself." The physiological under-structure of association 

scarcely exists at birth, but gradually, through experience, 
dynamic pathways in the cerebral substance are developed, 
constituting an associative network, connecting the. various 
centres with one another. On the mental side an increasing 
readiness to note resemblances, differences, etc., and to note 
them Avhere they are less obvious, is developed in the course 
of experience. 

In Mr. Darwin's opinion, the child far surpasses the lower 
animals in associative power. "The facility with which 
associated ideas . . . were acquired, seemed to me by far 
the most strongly marked of all the distinctions between 
the mind of an infant, and that of the cleverest full-grown 
dog I ever saw." 

The recorded observations on this point show great in- 
dividual differences. Champneys saw signs of association 
of pleasurable feelings as early as the eighth week, when the 
child accompanied a smiling expression with sucking motions 
of the lips. Tiedemann thought he saw traces of association 
on the eighteenth day, when the child ceased crying and put 
himself into the attitude for taking nourishment when a soft 



INTELLECT. 53 

liand came into contact with his face. Sully observed a 
similar thing at ten weeks. Darwin, on the contrary, did 
not notice any signs of associations firmly fixed before the 
fifth month; and Taine puts it as late as the tenth month; 
while Perez believes that homogeneous sensations are, by 
the middle of the first month, associated to such a point 
that they are recognized when reproduced; and he goes on 
to say that " there is not one of the combinations of associa- 
tions, which have been studied so carefully by j)sychologists, 
of which we cannot find at least a faint foreshadowing in a 
child of six or seven months.'' 

The following are examples of association by contiguity : 
When a little child's hat and cloak are put on, or he is 
placed in his carriage, he becomes restless, and even angry, 
if not immediately taken out. This has been observed in 
children less than half a year old, and in others of one 
year. At the latter age the association is much stronger ; 

he cannot even see a hat, cloak or umbrella without mani- 
festing the same restlessness. Probably also, as Perez 
thinks, we may see in the child's crying for food on the 
return of daylight the germ of association by succession,, 
out of which is constructed the idea of time. A rudimen- 
tary notion of cause and effect may also be seen in the babe 
of half a year or thereabouts, who, having been once burnt 
by a hot object, afterwards draws back at the sight of it ; 
and in the child, who, finding a peculiar scratching sound to 
follow the passage of his finger nail over an object, repeats 
the process again and again, until he has clearly established 
the relation between the motion and the sound. Con- 

tiguity in the form of coexistence is seen in the following: 
At seven months, the person of the nurse was associated 
with the sound of her name ; when her name was uttered, 
the child would turn round and look for her. The same 

thing was observed in another child five months old. 



54 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

Darwin's boy, at nine months, associated his own name 
with his image in the mirror. When ten months old he 
learned that an object which caused a shadow to fall on the 
wall in front of him, was to be looked for behind. When 
less than a year old, it was sufficient to repeat a short sen- 
tence two or three times at intervals, to fix firmly in his 
mind some associated idea. 

Eesemblance, if not the earliest, is certainly among the 
strongest of the child's associations. Darwin's child, in the 
second half of his first year, would shake his head and say 
all to the coal-box, to water spilt on the floor, and to such 
things as bore a resemblance to things which he had been 
taught to consider dirty. Another boy, nine months old, on 
hearing the word " papa," would hold out his arms to another 
gentleman who resembled his father ; and a little girl of 
this age knew the portrait of her grandfather as it hung on 
the wall. Sigismund says: "I showed my boy — not yet 
one year old — a stuffed woodcock, and said 'Vogel.' He 
immediately turned his eyes to another part of the room, 
and looked at a stuffed owl which stood there." Taine's 
little girl, at fifteen months, on seeing colored pictures of 
birds, immediately cried out koko, which was her name for 
chicken. The little boy, C, on seeing the image on a postal 
card, at once made a peculiar snuffing noise, which his 
grandfather was in the habit of doing, showing that he 
observed a resemblance between his grandfather and the 
picture on the card. 

For resemblances among sounds, children in general have 
the keenest relish. They are inveterate punsters. Ehymes 
and alliterations are their especial delight. They will catch 
the faintest link of resemblance in the sounds of words. 
^^ Harry 0' Neil is nicknamed Harry Oatmeal, . . . October 
suggests knocked over, and from do re me, they get do re 
you^ Mere jingles, tiresome to the grown-up person, 



INTELLECT. 55 

will amuse them for hours; such as "Ene, mene, mine mo," 
etc., or, "Dickory, dickory, dock," etc. 

When the child learns to speak, the power of association 
by resemblances, in his mind, is exemplified in his habit of 
enlarging the denotation of words, so as to make one word 
do duty for several objects which resemble each other in 
certain respects. The discussion of this will be resumed 
later {infra, Section 5 and Chap. V.). 

IV. Imagixatioist. 

There are two species of imagination. First, the passive, 
in which, without the exercise of active attention, or any 
effort of will, images pass and repass, arranging and 
rearranging themselves in the phantasy. This is exempli- 
fied in dreams, and in the resuscitation of faded memory 
images in the waking moments by the laws of association. 
Secondly, the active or constructive imagination, in which, 
by an effort of attention and will, old images are worked up 
into new forms, inanimate objects have life and personality 
attributed to them, and curious scenes and combinations are 
produced by the inventive genius of the person imagining. 

With regard to the first, Perez says : " The child, hardly 
a month old, who recognizes his mother's breast at a very 
short distance, shows, by the strong desire he has to get to 
it, that this sight has made an impression on him, and that 
this image must be deeply engraven on his memory. The 
child who, at the age of three months, turns sharply round 
on hearing a bird sing, or on hearing the name coco pro- 
nounced, and looks about for the bird cage, has formed a 
very vivid idea of the l)ird and the cage. When, a little 
later, on seeing his nurse take her cloak, or his mother wave 
her umbrella, he shows signs of joy, and pictures to himself 
a walk out of doors, he is again performing a feat of 



66 thp: psychology of childhood. 

imagination. In like manner, when, at the age of seven or 
eight months, having been deceived by receiving a piece of 
bread instead of cake, on finding out the trick, he throws 
the bread away angrily, we feel sure that the image of the 
cake must be very clearly imprinted on his mind. Finally, 
when he begins to babble the word papa at the sight of any 
man whatever, it must be that the general characteristics 
which make up what he calls papa are well fixed in his 
imagination." "When they are left alone, children who have 
acquired the word "mamma," will repeat this name over 
and over again, proving the presence of the mother's image 
in the imagination. 

One of the most significant forms of the passive imagina- 
tion in childhood is the dream. It is very difficult to ascer- 
tain, when the child first begins to dream, and this for 
several reasons. The child who can talk, will "tell his 
dreams," in imitation of grown-up people, no dream having 
taken place. In the case of the child avIio cannot talk, we 
have very little reliable information to go upon. But there 
seems no reason to doubt that dreams may take place just as 
soon as the child's waking experiences have furnished him 
with clear and definite sensations. 

As for the constructive imagination, our space will not 
admit the hosts of examples that might be given of the 
wonderful fertility of children's minds in this respect. 
Their little wooden toys become transformed into real sol- 
diers, fighting real battles, mighty locomotives drawing long 
trains of heavily-laden cars, or great steamships sailing over 
unfathomable oceans. " Given a few broken pieces of glass, 
a flower, a fruit, a colored string, a doll, and out of them 
the baby imagination constructs an immeasurable happi- 
ness." ^ Indeed it would seem, as Jastrow says, that the 

1 See "The Story of a Sand Pile," by G. S. Hall, in Scribner's 
Magazine for June, 1888. 



INTELLECT. 57 

function of toys is to serve as "lay figures, on which the 
child's imagination can weave and drape its fancies." 
In order to serve this purpose, the toy does not need to be 
a work of art. "We don't like buyed dolls," says little 
Budge, in "Helen's Babies," and in so saying, he seems to 
voice the opinions of the majority of children. A wax doll 
is a nice thing to have, and look at occasionally, but for 
real, "sure enough," every-day play, give us the old rag 
doll.i 

Children in their plays imagine themselves other than 
they are. They transform themselves into kings and 
queens, professors and preachers, fathers and mothers and 
grandparents, and fulfill all the functions of neighbors 
and citizens with the greatest solemnity and dignity. They 
surround themselves with imaginary personages, and carry 
on imaginary conversations.^ 

I shall close this section with a quotation. W. W. Newell, 
in " Games and Songs of American Children," says : " Observe 
a little girl who has attended her mother for an airing in 
some city park. The older person, quietly seated beside 
the footpath, is half absorbed in reverie; takes little notice 
of passers-by, or of neighboring sights or sounds, further 
than to cast an occasional glance, which may inform her of 



1 The same thing holds with regard to pictures. I have seen a copy 
of a German picture-book for children, which is almost completely 
lacking in artistic excellence, but which has gone through one hundred 
and seventy-seven editions. A movement is now on foot in Russia to 
prohibit the importation of the finely finished and elegant French toys, 
on the ground that they leave no room for the exercise of the child's 
imagination. 

2 " One of the greatest pleasures of childhood is found in the mys- 
teries which it hides from the scepticism of the elders, and works up 
into small mythologies of its own."- Holmes, "The Poet at the 
Breakfast Table." 



58 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

the child's security. The other, left to her own devices, 
wanders contented within the limited scope, incessantly 
prattling to herself; now climbing an adjoining rock, now 
flitting like a bird from one side of the pathway to the other. 
Listen to her monologue, flowing as incessantly and musi- 
cally as the bubbling of a spring; if you can catch enough 
to follow her thought, you will find a perpetual romance 
unfolding itself in her mind. Imaginary persons accom- 
pany her footsteps ; the properties of a childish theatre exist 
in her fancy; she sustains a conversation in three or four 
characters. The roughness of the ground, the hasty passage 
of a squirrel, the chirping of a sparrow, are occasions suffi- 
cient to suggest an exchange of impressions between the 
unreal figures with which her world is peopled. If. she 
ascends, not without a stumble, the artificial rockwork, it is 
with the expressed solicitude of a mother who guides an 
infant by the edge of a precipice ; if she raises her glance 
to the waving green overhead, it is with the cry of pleasure 
exchanged by x^laymates who trip from home on a sunshiny 
day. The older person is confined within the barriers of 
memory and experience, the younger breathes the free air 
of creative fancy." 

V. The Discursive Pkocesses. 

Conception, judgment and reasoning, the three processes 
of discursive thought, are treated together, because it is 
impossible to make qualitative distinctions among them. 
They differ only in degree, not in kind. In every concept, 
there is involved a rudimentary judgment, and the syllogism 
consists simply in the apperceptive synthesis of judgments, 
whose constituent elements are concepts. The three are 
then at bottom only different stages in the one process, by 
which knowledge of the abstract is elaborated. Examples 



INTELLECT. 59 

given, therefore, to illustrate the one, contain elements 
almost equally illustrative of the others. 

CoxcEPTiox. — The child's earliest experience, being pre- 
dominantly physiological, is also predominantly individual 
and concrete. He lives in the particular. It is a momen- 
tous juncture in his life when he first steps out beyond 
individual things, to abstract their common qualities, and 
of these to form notions. It is only then that he begins to 
tJiink, in the strict sense of the word; and it is this thinking 
in abstractions and generals, which, in Locke's opinion, 
differentiates the human mind essentially from lower animal 
intelligence.^ 

Taine believes that the general notion makes its appear- 
ance only with the acquisition of language. Preyer, on 
the other hand, maintains that "even before the first 
attempts at speaking, a generalizing and, therefore, concept- 
forming combination of memory-images regularly takes 
place." "That the ability to abstract may show itself, 
though imperfectly, even in the first year, is, according to 
my observations, certain. Infants are struck by a quality 
of an object — e.g., the white appearance of milk. The 
'abstracting,' then, consists in the isolating of, this quality 
from innumerable other sight-impressions, and the blending 
of the impressions into a concept. The naming of this, 
which begins months later, ... is an outward sign of this 
abstraction, which did not at all lead to the formation of 
the concept, but followed it." He also quotes from 

Oehlwein to show that deaf-mute children, in the first year 
of life, form concepts, and logically combine them with one 
another; and he concludes that thinking is not bound up 
with verbal language, though it no doubt demands a certain 

Book II., Chap. IL 



60 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

degree of cerebral development. Even orangs and chim- 
panzees reason without language, but their concepts are 
neither so abstract, so clear, nor so numerous as those of the 
child even before he learns to speak, while after that time 
the gulf between them widens infinitely. 

Perez agrees with the above view, and quotes from Hou- 
zeau to show that dogs, bees and other dumb creatures have 
concepts, and carry on reasoning processes. As to the child, 
he gives several examples on this point. A boy of eight 
months, who used to amuse himself by stuffing things into 
a tin box, afterwards examined every new toy to find an 
opening. Another child of the same age used to make a 
peculiar sound when he desired solid food, different from 
that by which he expressed his desire of the breast. 
Another, at nine months, gave unmistakable evidence that 
he possessed the concept "animal." 

According to Eomanes, there is a class of ideas standing 
between the percept and the concept, less abstract than the 
latter, but more general than the former, to which he gives 
the name recept. They are complex ideas arising out of a 
repetition of more or less similar percepts. E.g., when a 
parrot, Avho has learned to call out bow-woiv when the house 
dog enters the room, also calls out this word on seeing other 
dogs of various sizes, colors and forms, he possesses an idea 
which constitutes an advance on the percept, but cannot, 
strictly speaking, be called a concept. Every child passes 
through a receptual stage, which does not require language, 
whereas the concept, properly so-called, or the active 
synthesis of qualities into a class is not, in his opinion, 
attained until the child can speak. ^ 



1 See also a series of articles in Public School Journal for 
November and December, 1891, and January and February, 1892, 
entitled, " How do Concepts arise from Percepts ? " 



INTELLECT. 61 

Taking the ordinary meaning of the word concept, which, 
includes what Komanes expresses by recept, it seems estab- 
lished that the formation of the concept is prior to, and 
in large measure independent of, language; but it seems 
equally clear that abstraction and generalization do not attain 
to any great degree of complexity without the aid of speech, 
as the observation of the cleverest deaf-mutes clearly shows. 
Even after speech begins, the discursive processes develop 
but slowly. In one case, a child of seventeen months had 
not yet differentiated his collective concept "taste-smell" 
(as united in one object) into the concepts "taste" and 
" smell ;^^ though another child, at seven months, seemed 
to have ideas of kind. A boy of three years did not know 
the meaning of "size" or "goodness," though long before 
this he perfectly understood the expression: "Baby is a 
good boy." Children have very little idea of number in the 
first two years. A child of two and a half years confounded 
"naughty" with "ugly." In short, we find at this period 
only the lowest degree of abstraction. 

The child's first generalizations are very inaccurate. 
Even when he begins to talk and to use general names, he 
does not use them in the same sense as the adult. His 
generalizations are apt to be too wide. " Logic in the child 
naturally operates with much more extensive and less 
intensive notions than in adults. Hence he is very liable 
to illusion, not through stupidity, but simply through igno- 
rance, arising out of lack of experience." After having held 
out grass to a sheep, he also offers some to the birds, and 
in this he is acting with perfect consistency, within the 
range of his knowledge. He extends the term papa to other 
men, the word aita ov peudii (perdu) to all sorts of disappear- 
ances ; he makes the word quack-quack apply not only to a 
duck, but to the water on which the duck swims, then to all 
birds and insects, then to all fluids, and finally to all coins. 



62 THE rSYCllOLOGY UF CHILDHOOD. 

because he had seen the picture of an eagle on a French 
sou. He inckides an eye-ghiss in the concept bon dieu 

(blessed medal), and the steamboat, coffee-pot, and all hiss- 
ing, noisy objects, in the class fafey- (chemin de fer, locomo- 
tive). A little girl of eighteen months had been amused by 
her mother hiding in play, and saying coitcou. She had also 
been warned to keep out of the hot sun, by the words ^a 
hrule. One day, on seeing the sun disappear behind a hill, 
she put these two ideas together and exclaimed a hinle cou- 
cou. Another child of the same age applied the name 

7io-no to all eye-glasses, because she had been forbidden to 
snatch off her nurse's glasses by the words no-no. Taine 

believes the characteristic mark, distinguishing the child 
from the lower animal, is this very capacity of detecting 
resemblances amid differences, which leads him to extend, 
to such a surprising degree, the denotation of the term. 
Not only does he apply the word boiv-ivoiv to the terriers, 
mastiffs and Newfoundlands which he meets in the street, 
but "a little later he does what an animal never does, he 
says bow-zvoio to a pasteboard dog that barks when squeezed, 
then to a pasteboard dog which does not bark, but runs on 
wheels, then to the bronze dogs which ornament the drawing- 
room, then to his little cousin, who runs about the room 
on all fours, then, at last, to a picture representing a 
dog. 

Children's notions of things are chiefly connected with 
their uses or actions. M. Binet gives a large number of 
interesting definitions of things given by children, from 
which I select the following : " Un couteau, c'est pour couper 
la viande." "Un cheval, c'est pour trainer une voiture, 
avec un monsieur dedans." " Une lampe, c'est pour allumer, 
pour qu'on voie clair dans la chambre." "Un crayon, c'est 
pour ecrire." "Un chapeau, c'est pour mettre sur la tete." 
(Note the frequency of the "pour.") 



INTELLECT. 6-3 

Judgment is involved, in a rudimentary form, in concep- 
tion, and even in perception, as may be seen from the fore- 
going examples. When a child at two months recognizes 
his parents; at three and a half months turns round to the 
cage on hearing the word coco; "comes to meet" the spoon 
with his mouth when being fed; at seven months turns his 
head around to the left when an object is carried so far 
behind him that he can no longer see it by turning to the 
right; at eight months recognizes a pictorial representation; 
and cries for Gourlay water, which is white and opaque, 
though not for ordinary water; in the tenth month gives 
evidence of the knowledge that bodies have weight; and 
shows by unmistakable signs that he misses his absent par- 
ents, and even knows when a single nine-pin is removed 
from his set, — we cannot doubt that he is performing an act 
of judgment. These primitive judgments are mostly con- 
crete and particular, abstract and general judgments being a 
later attainment. Children of eighteen months will recog- 
nize the pictures of all the more familiar animals, and 
respond with the appropriate sounds, bow-iuow, moo, etc. 
The spoken judgment arises when an object arouses an idea 
in the child's mind, to which idea he attaches a name, 
recognizing it as connected with the object. The first 
spoken judgment does not then require two words, as Taine 
seems to think, but usually consists of one word, which does 
duty for a whole sentence.^ 

Eeasoxixg. — When the little boy, R., was four months 
old, he was playing one day on the floor surrounded by his 
toys. One toy rolled away beyond his reach. He seized a 
clothes-pin and used that as a " rake " with which to draw 

1 Preyer's boy, at twenty-three months, uttered his first spoken 
judgment, viz., " Heiss " (= " This food is too hot "). 



64 THE rSYCIlOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

the toy withiQ reach of Jiis hand. Mr. Darwin laid his 
finger on the palm of a child five months old. The child 
closed his fingers around it, and carried it to his mouth. 
When he found that he was hindered from sucking it, by 
his own fingers getting in the way, he loosened his grasp 
and took a new hold farther down, then vigorously sucked 
the finger. When Preyer's boy, at six months, "after con- 
siderable experience in nursing, discovered that the flow of 
milk was less abundant, he used to place his hand hard 
upon the breast, as if he w^anted to force out the milk by 
pressure." Another child, at seven months, cried for a 
share of the food his nurse was eating. A boy of eight 

months took a watch, which was offered him, and after biting 
on it with evident satisfaction, tried to break a piece off, as 
he would from a cracker. At thirteen months, a child who 
noticed the resemblance between two men, inferred certain 
acts on the part of the one, which he had been accustomed 
to see in the other. 

The boy, C, when fourteen months old, was one day feed- 
ing the dog with crackers, when the supply ran out. He 
immediately " crept to the sideboard, opened the left-hand 
door, pulled himself up by the shelf, and helped himself 
out of the box in which they were kept." He had seen 
crackers taken from this box before, but had never done it 
himself. He was observed to feel his own ears, and then 
his mother's, one day Avhen looking at pictures of rabbits. 
One day, when eighteen months old, he came in from play- 
ing on the lawn, quite hot and somewhat dirty. He at once 
ran to his mother, holding up his dirty dress with a gesture 
of disgust; then ran to the drawer where his clean clothes 
were kept, and tugged at it with all his might. Another 
boy of the same age, both of whose hands were filled with 
toys, wishing to grasp still another, quickly put one of them 
between his knees. A little girl of this age used to feign 



INTELLECT. 65 

sleep until the nurse left the room, when she would immedi- 
ately resume her interrupted romps. Tiedemann's boy, 
at two years of age, used to employ cunning to accomplish 
his purposes. The little girl, F., at a year and a half, fur- 
nished a good example of reasoning by analogy. She had 
been shown the pictures in a book with red binding. She 
afterwards went to the bookcase and took down two other 
books having red binding, and looked through them, evi- 
dently expecting to find pictures in them also. One day 
when I rose to take my leave, she patted vigorously on the 
cushion of a chair, and then pulled at my coat to induce me 
to prolong my stay. " 

From about the end of the second year, the reasoning 
power in most children makes such rapid progress that it is 
impossible to set down all the examples that are to hand. 
I content myself with one more. A boy of two years was 
quite familiar with the articles of his food by name, and 
when the word milk was spoken in his hearing, he clamored 
for a share of that article. His mother hit upon the device 
of spelling the word, when it was undesirable that his atten- 
tion should be called to it. Before long, however, he learned 
to know the word, even when spelled, and one day, when 
his mother asked for the m-i-l-k, he at once cried out, 
mic'key. 

VI. The Idea of Self. 

The phenomena which accompany and indicate the gradual 
emergence into clear consciousness, of what Taine calls the 
"unextended centre," the "mathematical point," by relation 
to which all the " other " is defined, and which each of us 
calls " I, " or " me, " — the external evidences that the child 
is slowly but surely becoming "aware of himself as a perma- 
nent being, distinct from the objects he knows, the feelings 



66 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

he experiences, and the ends he chooses/' — may be con- 
veniently classified under four heads : 

1. The Child's Treatment of his owx Body. — In 

the first weeks he will strike or scratch his own face. One 
boy bit his own finger until he cried with the pain, even in 
the early part of the second year. In tlie ninth month the 
feet are still eagerly felt of, and the toes carried to the 
mouth, the same as foreign substances. This experimenta- 
tion with his own limbs goes on all through the second, and 
in some cases well on into the third year. "In the first 
year the child's organism is not known as part of him- 
self." A boy of nineteen months, when asked to " give 
the foot," seized it with both hands, and tried to hand it 
over. A little girl, a little over two years old, used to 
enlarge on a familiar ditty in the following fashion : " One 
for papa, one for mamma, one for toses (one for toes)." 
Sigisniund believes that the child learns a good deal about 
his own limbs (and so takes the first step toward a knowl- 
edge of self) through bringing his hand to his mouth, to ease 
the pain of the growing teeth. The feeling is different 
when he chews his own finger and that of his nurse. A 
child of four or five months studies his own fingers atten- 
tively. When one hand accidentally grasps the other, he 
looks attentively at both. Lying on his back, he gazes at 
his legs stretched up in the air. 

Closely connected with this is the child's evident delight 
in his own activity and ability to do things. Wundt believes 
the muscular sense plays a predominant role in the genesis 
of self-consciousness, and there is little doubt that the 
acquisition of the power of walking contributes very largely 
to the growth of the self -idea. The feeling of power is 
engendered by the discovery that he can cause changes in 
objects. " An extremely significant day in the life of the 



INTELLECT. 67 

infant is the one in which he first experiences the connection 
of a movement executed by himself with a sense-impression 
following upon it." Preyer's boy, in the fifth month, 

discovered that by tearing paper he could produce sound 
sensations; also by shaking a bunch of keys, opening and 
closing a box (thirteenth month), turning the leaves of a 
book, etc., and these occupations were accordingly carried 
on with a perseverance astonishing to an adult. He experi- 
enced a genuine pleasure in finding himself a cause. 

2. The Child's Behavior towards his Image in the 
Mirror. — Darwin's child failed to interpret his reflection 
when five months old, but two months later he had accom- 
plished it, and at nine months had learned to associate his 
name with the image. Another child at eight months used 
to look at his reflection with wonder (expressed by wide- 
open eyes and immobility). " On being shown a hand glass, 
he regards his image with interest, smiles and tries to catch 
it. He puts his hand on the glass, and tries to take hold 
of the image's hand. Then he turns the glass over, and 
looks up in Avonder at the result." A similar perform- 

ance was gone through by a boy of ten months; and, six 
months later, he was found one day standing before the 
glass, pulling his hair, examining his eyes and ears, and 
sticking out his tongue. Preyer's boy did not notice 

himself in the glass when three months old. Three weeks 
later he looked at it, but with indifference. Two weeks 
later still, he regarded it with attention, and laughed at the 
sight of it. ]!s"ear the end of the sixth month, he stretched 
out his hand towards it. In his ninth month he grasped at 
it, and seemed surprised when his hand came against the 
smooth surface. At fourteen months he passed his hand 
behind the glass, as if searching for something. He after- 
wards behaved in the same manner toward a photograph. 



68 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

In the sixteenth month he made grimaces before the glass, 
laughing as he did so. Two weeks later he looked at him- 
self often in the glass, with pleasure and evident vanity. 
At twenty months he connected his own name with the 
image, and when asked, "Where is Axel?" would point to 
the reflection. Another child knew her image in the glass 
at twelve months, would point to it and say Tatie (Katie). 
A little boy of fifteen months calls his image Titta, by 
w^hich he means child or doll. 

3. In the third place, we have those actions which show 
the beginnings of the Feeling of Property, such as 
pride in personal appearance, and in adornment, jealousy 
over toys, and other things which the child considers his 
rights. A number of examples have already been given in 
connection with the emotion of jealousy. As regards per- 
sonal adornment, there are very great differences among 
children, some taking great delight in it, while others seem 
to care but little about it. A little girl whom I have 
observed since her first year seems very fond of it, and will 
spend hours in adorning herself with veils and feathers and 
bracelets, making believe she is some fine lady. Whenever 
her best clothes are put on, or a new hat, she is very proud 
and walks very straight and dignified indeed. 

4. Lastly, we notice the Child's Use of the Pronoun 
"I" (Je, /c/t, Ego). It is interesting to remember that, 
according to the opinion of some philologists (Max Miiller, 
for example), this word was, at the beginning of the develop- 
ment of language, a demonstrative, meaning "this one," and 
was probably accompanied by a gesture, and perhaps, further 
back still, the gesture supplied the place of the word. Man 
spoke of himself in the third person before he learned to use 
the first person. Just so with the child. He first calls 



INTELLECT. 69 

himself by his proper name, or he uses the word hahy, and 
the intelligent use of the first personal pronoun comes late 
— most observers put it as late as the third year. I have 
never heard a child less than two years old call himself " I " 
or "me." The chief difficulty in the way of his doing so 
is that he never hears the word applied to him by others. 
This is why he makes such errors as " Take me up on my 
(meaning your) lap." 

The " I " feeling is often present, therefore, before the 
word is used. The concept of the self is not generated, but 
only rendered more exact and definite by speech. On the 
other hand, it must not be presumed that the concept is 
always present where the word is used. Children who are 
constantly in the society of those who use the word will use 
it also, merely by imitation in many cases, without compre- 
hending its meaning. A child may say "I am hungry," 
without any idea that " I " is different from " hungry." 
Perez says: "When the child learns to say 'I' or 'me,' 
instead of 'Charles' or 'Paul,' the terms 'I' and 'me' are 
not more abstract to him than the proper names which he 
has been taught to replace by 'I' or 'me.' Both the pro- 
nouns and the names equally express a very distinct and 
very concrete idea of individual personality. When a three- 
year-old child says 'I want that,' it is only a translation of 
'Paul wants that,' and 'I,' like 'Paul,' indicates neither the 
first nor the third person, but the person who is himself, his 
own well-known personality, which he continually feels in 
his emotions and actions. An abstract notion of personality 
does not exist in a young child's mind." In short, so 

great is the influence of the environment here, that scarcely 
anything can be asserted in a general way of all children. 
Some children scarcely ever hear the pronoun "I." The 
members of the family avoid it, and say instead: "Mamma 
is busy;" "Sister is gone to school;" "Baby must be 



70 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

good," etc.; in such cases, the child will of course take a 
long time to acquire the word. 

In many cases, me is used before /. It seems easier, for 
some reason. Sometimes children pass through a sort of 
transition period, when / is used indifferently with the 
proper name, or even with he. Binet says of the little girl 
he observed that at three and a half years exactly, she first 
used the word je, in the sentence je ne sais pas. Two days 
after she said Je ne veux 2)as. But long after that, she made 
many mistakes in the use of the pronoun. In two other 
children, the /took the place of the third personal designa- 
tion before the end of the third year, and I preceded me, 
and you was later than either. Another child at twenty- 

five months used 7ny, but not /. 

Such are the various factors entering into the develop- 
ment of the child's self-consciousness, by which "he raises 
himself higher and higher above the dependent condition of 
the animal, so that at last the difference (not recognizable 
at all before birth, and hardly recognizable at the beginning 
after birth) between animal and human being" attains such 
infinite magnitude. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE FEELINGS, 

The principle of transformation, which is exemplified in 
almost every fact recorded in the preceding chapters, is still 
more clearly illustrated in those departments of the mental 
life which we have yet to consider. In studying the emo- 
tional life of children, for example, we shall observe that in 
the earlier stages, when intellectual comprehension (which is 
essential to the emotions of the grown-up person) can by no 
means be presumed to be present, yet the outward manifes- 
tation — movement, facial expression, etc. — resembles very 
closely that of the adult, or the older child. It seems 
unphilosophical to class the phenomena of these two periods 
together under a common name, and our only excuse for 
doing so is that the one shades off so gradually into the 
other that to establish a rigid line of distinction seems 
impossible. We shall therefore consider both stages under 
the general head of feeling, with the preliminary remark, 
that emotion in the proper sense of the term, arises only 
when the mental jDowers have so far developed, that the 
feeling is the loroduct or outcome of thought. Previous to 
that time the outward expression must be looked upon 
merely as the response of the organism to agreeable or 
disagreeable conditions. In the case of a genuine emotion, 
as above described, the same physiological expressions con- 
tinue to be employed, because through habit they have 
become easier than any others, while their employment in 
the first stage may be accounted for on the principle of 
heredity. 

71 



72 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 



I. Fear. 

These remarks are specially true in the case of fear, 
whose manifestation is at j&rst quite independent of thought, 
and of specific experiences, but which, as a true mental 
phenomenon, requires both these for its full development. 

We have, then, two stages of fear : First, the fear that is 
independent of hurtful experiences, and must be considered 
hereditary; and secondly, the fear that is produced by a 
mental image of the danger. The former is very marked 
in the lower animals. AVhen Spalding let loose a hawk 
suddenly over a brood of young chickens in a meadow, they 
immediately "crouched" and hid themselves in the grass, 
while the mother hen attacked the foe .with tremendous 
violence, though neither she nor her brood had ever seen a 
hawk before. A dove, let loose in the same way, produced 
no such result. So the child, when only a few weeks old, 
will start and cry at any sudden sound or strange sight, 
quite independently of experience. He shrinks from cats 
and dogs, without ever having been injured by them ; he is 
afraid of falling, before he has ever fallen, and trembles at 
the sight of large and majestic objects, such as the ocean, 
when he looks upon them for the first time. Many infants 
cry when it thunders, though they do not at all understand 
what it is, and experience a shock — just as some nervous 
adults do — w^ien a door closes with a bang, or an object 
falls upon the floor. They contract all the muscles of 
the body nervously when suddenly lowered through the 
air in the nurse's arms. They sometimes shrink from 
people dressed in black, and from those who speak in deep 
sepulchral tones. A little girl, slightly over two months 
old, appeared terrified on beholding a distorted face; she 
cried out, and sought protection in her mother's arms. A 



THE FEELINGS. 73 

boy of seven months seemed afraid when a fan was opened 
and closed before him ; and another at a loud snoring noise 
which he heard for the first time. The boy G., when about 
a year old, manifested the most abject terror at the sight 
(and sound) of a bright red humming top which had been 
bought for him. He even refused for some time to go near 
the spot w^here the top had been. Up to the present time 
this fear has abated very little, though the top has been for 
more than a year in his home. 

In this early period, most children seem more afraid of 
sounds than of sights. They are usually afraid of thunder, 
but scarcely ever of lightning. A child who started ner- 
vously when a box of comfits was shaken before him, made 
no such sign when the empty box was shaken. One may 
thrust with the finger, as Ave have seen, quite close to the 
open eye of an infant, without causing him to blink, while, 
if one speaks to him in a harsh or loud tone, he will cry. 
A little child has been known to lie smiling in his cradle, 
surrounded by the flames of a burning house; but when 
rescued, has broken out into loud cries of fear at the noise 
of the engines and the shouting of the assembled crowd. 
Little G., when slightly over two years of age^^ became very 
much frightened at the sound made by a clock from whose 
pendulum the weight had been removed, and which was 
rapidly running down with a loud whirring noise. 

Eye-fear, however, soon develops, and strange sights as 
well as sounds startle and frighten the child. We have a 
very ancient example of this in the Iliad, where Hector is 
described as bidding his wife and child farewell before 
going out to the fight. When he reached out his arms 
for the child, the latter cried out, and hid his face in the 
bosom of the nurse, frightened by his father's gleaming 
bronze, and the helmet crested with horse-hair. Sigismund 
describes his child as showing fear of a sleeve board, by 



74 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

association with the glowing "goose," and also ab the 
sparks from a blacksmith's forge. There are also touch- 
fears. The little girl F. started back when her hand came 
into contact with some soft fur. The suddenness of the 
sensation apparentl}^ had more to do with her fear than 
the quality of the feeling, for she soon lost her fear of this 
article. 

According to my observations, the fears of children are 
most commonly aroused by objects that are vast and of 
overpowering aspect, and that emit loud sounds, especially 
when they approach too near. In many cases, too, this fear 
is felt only when the child is forced to face the dreaded 
object aloyie, A boy of two years, who takes great delight 
in going with his father to watch the passing trains from 
the bottom of the garden, came running to the house one 
day in great fear, when a passing express found him at the 
post of observation alone. 

Some investigations have recently been made in Cali- 
fornia with the view of determining icliat objects for the 
most part cause the fears of children. In nearly two- 
thirds of the cases examined, the fear was "a vague, 
haunting termor of the dark, of awful shapes, of something 
I know not what," conjured up, apparently, in the child's 
imagination. In the remainder of the cases, the fear 
was connected with specific objects, persons, animals, or 
machines, such as the steam engine. 

The plasticity of the child's nature renders him suscepti- 
ble to impressions which, in many cases, remain with him 
through life. Fear of the dark, fear of the woods, fear 
of being alone, are often inculcated by unwise nurses and 
teachers, and remain, in some cases, ineradicably fixed in 
the constitution. Mosso tells of an old soldier who, on 
being asked what had been his greatest fear, replied : " I 
am nearly seventy years of age. I have looked death in 



THE FEELINGS. 75 

the face many times, and never felt fear ; but whenever I 
pass a little church in the shadow of a wood, or a deserted 
chapel in the mountains, I always remember an abandoned 
oratory in my native village, and am afraid. I look around, 
as if I were about to see the corpse of a murdered man 
which I saw in my infancy, and with which an old servant 
threatened to shut me up in order to quiet me." 

The child from three to seven years is very liable to have 
dreams of exceeding vividness, and if he wake suddenly 
out of a deep sleep, his face will often bear signs of great 
fear, as though he saw an apparition. The eyes stare 
straight ahead, he fails to recognize persons, he breaks out 
into perspiration, his heart beats hard and his limbs trem- 
ble. These nocturnal fears may become so strong as to 
cause veritable attacks of epilepsy. 

Sometimes a new fear is developed by sickness. Some 
children seem morbidly timid and fearful, while others 
seldom show signs of fear in any form. As the child's 
education progresses, his fear increases in some directions, 
and decreases in others ; as he learns, on the one hand, 
that certain objects which he supposed harmless are really 
harmful, and on the other, that some which he at first 
esteemed dangerous will do him no injury. In other 
words, it is only a commonplace to say that fear is both 
increased and diminished by advancing knowledge. The 
man is more afraid of a loaded pistol, and less afraid of 
an empty one, than the child. 

II. Angek. 

Anger (which, according to Plato, is one of the natural 
attributes of the soul, and closely akin to courage) is evil 
only in its abuse. _ In a moderate degree, it is the index of 
a just and sensitive temperament, and a force which educa- 



76 THE PSYCHOLOGY OP CHILDHOOD. 

tion should direct and not annihilate. "In my opinion," 
says Perez, "a child of ten months who does not weep or 
cry at least four or five times a day, who is not amused, 
and who is not irritated, like a savage, or a young animal, 
by a mere trifle (" pour une bagatelle "), is lacking in sensi- 
bility and in intelligence, and will, no doubt, be lacking in 
character, — bury him; he is dead." "It is necessary," he 
goes on to say, speaking of the education of the child in 
this regard, "to surround the cradle with an atmosphere of 
sweet serenity, but it is not always necessary to hide anger. 
Just anger should be shown, but with moderation." 

It is difficult to say when the child first feels anger, 
because its outward signs are at first very easily confounded 
with those of pain or distress. Mr. Sully thought he saw 
manifestations of anger at the very outset of life, in a little 
girl who, " in refusing to accept the nutriment provided by 
nature, showed all the signs of passionate wrath." Mr. 
Darwin noticed, in a child eight days old, frowning and 
wrinkling of the skin around the eyes before crying ; but he 
adds, " this may have been pain and not anger." In the 
third month, he thought he observed signs of real anger, and 
in the fourth month he had no doubt about it, for the blood 
rushed into the face and scalp. Tiedemann's son gave evi- 
dence of anger in the second month by actively pushing away 
the disagreeable object. By the eighth month, he was quite 
capable of violent anger and jealousy. Perez believes he 
has seen signs of impatience at the end of the first month, 
if not earlier ; and, in the second month, real fits of passion, 
pushing away distasteful objects, frowning, reddening, trem- 
bling, and weeping. At six months, children will scream 
if their toys are taken away, and towards the end of the 
first year, anger sometimes exhibits itself in revengeful 
actions hurtful to themselves, such as beating a chair, etc. 
A child of seven months screamed with rage because a 



THE FEELINGS. 77 

lemon slipped out of his hand; and at eleven months, if 
a wrong plaything were given him, he would push it away 
and beat it. 

Up to a certain age, almost all children are exceedingly 
irascible, and I know of no particular in which the familiar 
analogy of the child to the savage is more strikingly shown. 
The child's will and reason are weak, his passions are strong, 
comparatively speaking, and he is ruled by his feelings. So 
it is with savage races. They are proverbially passionate ; 
and the progressive effects of civilization upon a race, lead- 
ing them gradually to control the impetuous and unreason- 
able rage which characterized the earlier stages of their 
civilization, is strikingly analogous to the wise training of 
the human being from the irascibility of the child to the 
calmness and moderation of the educated man. 

III. Surprise, Astonishment, Curiosity. 

Surprise and astonishment are closely related to fear ; not 
only in childhood, but in all our life. Novelty of impres- 
sion and failure to understand are the prolific causes of 
wonder, as well as of fear. And yet, on the other hand, it 
must be borne in mind, that wonder requires and presup- 
poses a certain amount of knowledge. If I knew absolutely 
nothing about crows, the sight of a white crow would cause 
me no more surprise than the sight of a black one. This 
explains the fact that little children often fail to manifest 
surprise where we expect them to do so. They fail to be 
astonished at what happens, simply because, being totally 
ignorant in regard to the matter in hand, they have no 
preconceived ideas as to what ought to happen, and do 
not, therefore, expect any one thing more than any other. 
Accordingly, that which actually happens is taken as a 
matter of course. 



78 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

Surprise and astonishment are not identical. The former 
may be described as an active state, tlie Latter as a passive 
one. The child who is only surprised maintains control of 
his nmscles, and examines the strange object with the closest 
attention, while the astonished child suddenly loses voli- 
tional control, and remains lixed in the attitude in which 
the strange impression overtook him, with wide-open mouth 
and eyes. In the one case there is activity and movement, 
in the other a sort of paralysis. 

The germ of surprise has been observed in children less 
than a month old, who may be seen to stare at their own 
fingers, with great attention, as though having noticed them 
for the first time. Prom this time onward, wonder is con- 
stantly manifested at pictures on the wall, sunbeams dancing 
on the floor, the fire crackling on the hearth, and especially 
at the movements of animate beings. The infant gazes long 
and steadily at these strange phenomena. A little girl of 
less than a month, on being taken downstairs into new quar- 
ters, stared around in great wonder for a time, but this soon 
passed away. 

Astonishment makes its appearance later. The following 
are Preyer's observations on this point: In the twenty- 
second week, the child was struck with astonishment when 
his father suddenly appeared and spoke to him while they 
were riding in a railway carriage. In his sixth and seventh 
months, the same thing occurred at the sight of a stranger 
in the room. The child's eyes opened wide, his lower jaw 
dropped, and his body became motionless. In the eighth 
and ninth months, these symptoms were still more pro- 
nounced, but it was noticed that astonishment was mani- 
fested generally at sights and sounds, and not at impressions 
of taste and smell. The child manifested astonishment at 
the opening and shutting of a fan (31st week) ; at the imi- 
tation of the voices of animals (34th week) j at a strange 



THE FEELIXGS. 79 

face (44th week) ; at a new sound (52d week), and at a 
lighted lantern seen on awaking (58th week). Along with 
the gestures described there was sometimes the sound of 
"ah," made by involuntary expiration of breath. By the 
end of the second year, these signs of astonishment became 
more rare, as the child grew more accustomed to strange 
sense-impressions. 

It is to be observed that the peculiar manner of express- 
ing this emotion, as well as most of the others, is entirely 
original with the child himself. He expresses astonishment 
in this way before he lias had any opportunity of imitating 
the gestures of others. These gestures, therefore, must be 
the result of instinctive tendencies, which, by virtue of 
heredity, have become fixed in the human race, as they are 
everywhere the same. 

M. Egger emphasizes the close relationship between the 
feeling of wonder and the religious sentiment, and holds 
that the child is by nature predisposed to religious ideas, 
whose germs he, in fact, brings into the world with him. 
M. Perez, on the other hand, following Spencer, maintains 
that there is no innate predisposition in the child to look 
beyond the natural to the supernatural, and that, apart from 
training and example, the religious ideas would never take 
root in his mind. In the absence of conclusive evidence on 
the point, all opinions must be merely hypothetical. It may, 
however, be suggested that if the familiar analogy between 
the infancy of the individual and that of the race is to hold 
here, we must accept M. Egger's position, since almost all 
savage races are deeply religious, abounding in ideas of the 
supernatural. 

Closely allied to the sentiment of wonder is that of curi- 
osity. This is a natural, spontaneous tendency, which might 
perhaps be more fittingly classed under the head of intellect 
but for the fact that, in the very young child, its essential 



80 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

character is feeling. It consists of a sort of chronic hunger 
for new sensations, which impels the child constantly to 
handle, examine, taste, and otherwise experiment upon all 
objects that come within his reach. The little boy R. used 
to try to untie every parcel that was brought in. It is a 
purely sensuous impulse at first, but with the expansion of 
the intellect, it is transformed into the pure desire to know. 
It permeates the iMy of the child, which, as Sigismund 
says, is like the experimentation of the scientist, by which 
he elicits from nature the answers to his questions. It is 
one of the most powerful factors in the child's development, 
and should be guided into right channels, rather than dis- 
couraged, by the educator. 

Tiedemann believed curiosity was developed in his son in 
his second month ; the eyes made an effort to follow a new 
or curious object. Perez saw evidences of curiosity almost 
from the beginning, and at two months the child " would 
stretch out his hand, and turn his eyes and ears towards 
objects affecting his senses. At three months he would 
seize objects within reach, and shake them about to amuse 
himself." From this time on, and especially from the time 
he begins to walk, everything within reach becomes the 
object of constant study. The acquisition of language adds 
greatly to his resources in this respect. '' His little voice, 
a hundred times in an hour, expresses a desire, or asks a 
question, and that, not so much through need of knowing 
what things are, ... as through the appetite for fresh and 
new sensations. So powerful does this impulse become 
that sometimes the child is sad, or even sick, if it be not 
gratified." ^ 

M. Taine calls attention to the significant circumstance 
that this curiosity, which is so powerful a force in child 

1 •' Education Morale d^s le Berceau." 



THE FEELINGS. 81 

life, is not found in the lower animals. "Any one may 
observe that from the fifth or sixth month, children employ 
their whole time for two years or more in making physical 
experiments. No animal, not even the cat or dog, makes 
this constant study of all bodies within its reach. All day 
long the child of whom I sx^eak — twelve months old — 
touches, feels, turns about, lets drop, tastes, and experi- 
ments upon, everything she gets hold of, whatever it may 
be — ball, doll, coral, or plaything. When once it is suffi- 
ciently known, she throws it aside ; it is no longer new ; she 
has nothing further to learn from it, and so has no further 
interest in it." ^ It will be noticed here that Taine 
assigns a larger part to the intellectual than does Perez. 
He says physical need and greediness count for nothing. 
It is pure curiosity. "It seems as if, in her little brain, 
every group of perceptions was tending to complete itself, 
as in that of a child who makes use of language." But the 
little girl observed by Taine was a year old, and by that 
time, no doubt, curiosity was beginning to assume more of 
an intellectual character. 



IV. ^^STHETic Feelings. 

As early as the forty-fifth day, Mr. Darwin noticed a real 
smile of pleasure, "w^hich must have had a mental origin." 
It was observed when the infant was looking at his mother, 
and also during the act of nursing ; and was quite different 
from the so-called smiles which had been seen prior to that 
time, in being accompanied by a more intelligent expres- 
sion, and by the sparkling and "swimming" of the eyes. 

It is not to be presumed that every laugh of the young 
child proceeds from a comprehension of the humorous. The 

1 ••Mind," Vol. II., p. 252. 



82 TPTE r.SVrHOLOOY OF CHILDHOOD. 

first laugh, is probably — like the first vocal utterances — ■ 
only the spontaneous functioning of the organism. Yet it 
is maintained by careful observers that the sense of fun is 
present in some children three months old. About this age 
they may be greatly amused by such little games as throw- 
ing a pinafore over the head and suddenly withdrawing it, 
and by the familiar gambols of hide-and-peek. Later they 
show great pleasure at being carried on one's shoulder, 
swung about in the air, or tossed up to the ceiling. They 
laugh most heartily while the fun lasts, and are very unwill- 
ing that it should stop. 

Something has already been said on the subject of musical 
appreciation in children. Mr. Darwin, who observed in his 
child a fondness for the piano as early as the fourth month, 
considers the feeling of pleasure in music as the first of the 
aesthetic sentiments, unless the appreciation of bright colors 
comes earlier. Another child, at five months, showed signs 
of pleasure when singing was going on, and even kept a sort 
of time with his body, but was indifferent to whistling. 
Another observer places the pleasure in musical sounds as 
early as the second month, and in another case the child was 
observed at eleven weeks to pucker up his lip a little when 
the piano was being played. I have frequently observed 
this fondness for music at a later age, when the child will 
crowd close to the piano, and show his appreciation by 
rocking his body to and fro. Appreciation of expression in 
music is, however, almost entirely lacking at this time, and 
requires education to develop it. 

Sense of Material Beauty. — The child at first con- 
fuses the beautiful with tvhat is pleasant. Animated move- 
ment at the sight of beautiful things is at first, no doubt, 
only response to pleasant feeling. There is no understand- 
ing of form, color, etc., as beautiful or otherwise. This 



THE FEELINGS. 83 

pleasure in certain sensations, however, is one of the foun- 
dation stones upon which the aesthetic sense of material 
beauty is afterwards to be built. From about the eighth 
month, there have been observed the beginnings of this 
feeling in the pleasure shown by the child in personal 
adornment. But even now the sesthetic and the sensuous 
are blended in the pleasure a child feels in the new dress 
or hat. " Pretty '' and " good " are interchangeable terms in 
his mind. At thirteen months he will snatch at haphazard 
among a heap of toys, seeming not to discriminate at all 
among them as to beauty ; and, at a much later period, 
a child taken out to the country gives no evidence of any 
ax^preciation of the beauties of the landscape, but is attracted 
rather by some new or strange object — especially if it be 
an animal, or something that moves. Symmetry in form 
and harmony in colors make but little impression on him. 
Here, as in music, he demands quantity rather than quality, 
movement rather than expression. Yet these words must 
not be understood as denying to the young child all aesthetic 
feeling. Beautiful objects, if they are not too large, nor too 
distant, please him. He is charmed by the pretty butterfly 
and the pretty flower ; he is greatly attracted by the human 
face, and by the expression of the human eye. 

The dramatic instinct is very strong in childhood, though 
stronger and earlier in some children than in others. Chil- 
dren are born actors. Their lively imagination and strong 
hereditary tendency to imitation lead them, even before 
the first year of their life has gone, to perform many curi- 
ous movements and gestures. In their plays, children con- 
stantly personify, represent, dramatize, assume characters, 
and assign fictitious characters to other persons and things. 
An eminent teacher in Toronto assures me that his three 
children, in their play, almost always address each other by 
assumed names, and the play is carried on in make-believe 



84 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

characters, which are dropped as soon as the game is over, 
and never referred to at any other time. 

V. Love, Sympathy, etc. 

If we may judge by the smiles which an infant bestows 
upon those who have charge of him, affection for persons 
arises very early. These smiles have been observed before 
the end of the second month, and even at a much earlier 
period. The earliest smiles are probably automatic, as 
already said, but by the end of the fourth month there is no 
longer any doubt that persons are recognized. A little boy 
of this age was observed to lift up both arms towards his 
parents, "with an indescribable expression of longing." A 
girl of the same age used to be fond of lying beside her 
sister, their faces touching. After her sister died (she was 
then five months old), she seemed very lonely, and when 
she met other children of her own age, she would greet them 
with smiles and kisses. In another case visible signs of 
affection for persons whom he knew, were shown by a boy 
eight months old, and another boy, who, when nine months 
old, used to return his father's caresses by a charming smile 
and gentle stroking of his father's face, had grown very 
affectionate and sympathetic by the time he was fourteen 
months old, and bestowed his caresses in abundance, not 
only on his parents and friends, but on the cat and dog 
also. Spontaneous expression of affection is, in many cases, 
indeed, first shown about the beginning of the second year. 
One child of this age kissed his nurse repeatedly on her 
return from a short absence, and another was in the habit 
of showing his affection for certain persons by gently lay- 
ing his hand upon their faces or shoulders. Affection for 
animals, and even for inanimate objects, is also very strong 
in many children of this age. The little boy R. was remark- 



THE FEELINGS. 85 

ably attached to an old scarf of soft wool, and to a couple 
of rag dolls. He would not go to sleep without them, but 
would lie in his cradle and call for them until they were 
brought, when he would hug them up in his arms, and fall 
asleep chattering and cooing to them in a charming manner. 
When he got into trouble, especially if his mother punished 
him, he would run and bury his face in the old scarf, and 
weep out his childish sorrows into its sympathetic folds. 

The memory of the little child is comparatively weak, 
and his experience short; and hence, though capable of 
strong affection, that affection does not persist long in the 
absence of its object. "Out of sight, out of mind," is true 
in the case of the child during his first year, and relatively 
true to a much later period. He is incapable of "homesick- 
ness," with all its suffering, simply because he is unable as 
yet to form mental pictures of home and friends who are 
absent. He lives in the present rather than the past, in 
the realm of sense rather than that of memory. For the 
same reason, his love for persons and places is very plastic, 
and may be moulded and directed into almost any desired 
channel during these early months and years; hence the 
responsibility resting on those who are intrusted with his 
earliest education in home and school. 

There are two reasons why sympathy as a characteristic of 
childhood should be, during the first few months, so weak as 
to be almost entirely lacking. The first is that the child's 
life at this time is so full of his own personal needs that he 
can pay but little attention to those of others ; the second, 
that he is as yet unable to comprehend the outward signs of 
feeling in others, because of the shortness of his own experi- 
ence. It seems probable that some of the earliest manifes- 
tations of apparently sympathetic feeling may be merely 
the result of sensori-motor suggestion. Sigismund noticed 
the first signs of sympathy at the end of the first three 



86 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

montlis, but Tiedemann says his boy, when only two months 
old, made^sympathetic responses when consoled by the usual 
vocal expressions. Mr. Sully has observed the same thing. 
In another case a boy six months old drew a melancholy 
face, with mouth depressed, when his nurse pretended to 
cry. At seven months, another child manifested decided 
altruism, and seemed desirous of sharing his pleasures — 
with the exception of food — with others. In another case 
a child of eight months cried when some one pretended to 
whip his nurse, and another child of nearly the same age 
made a mournful whining noise, accompanied by the facial 
expression of "crying," on hearing another child cry, and 
also when a minor chord was struck on the piano. During 
the second year, sympathy becomes so strongly established 
that its outward evidences are sometimes seen, even on 
occasion of the imaginary sufferings of inanimate objects, 
and pictorial representation of suffering. A child of this 
age cried when her dolly was "hurt." Sympathy with 
human beings is, however, usually much stronger than ani- 
mal sympathy. A child of one year, who returned home 
after a short absence, took no notice whatever of the cat or 
dog, but at once recognized his nurse and the other mem- 
bers of the family with pleasure. The strength of human 
sympathy, and the need of it in the child, is seen in the fact 
that when he is hurt, he rarely cries, unless there is some 
one near at hand to hear him. 

If we speak of the little child as naturally selfish and 
egotistic, it must be with certain important modifications. 
These terms cannot be applied to him in the same sense as 
to an adult, because he is not yet in possession of those ideas 
of property upon which the existence of genuine selfishness 
depends. The words " mine " and " yours " have at the first 
no meaning for him ; he cannot therefore be selfish in the 
sense of desiring to have what he knows to belong to another. 



THE FEELINGS. 87 

When a little child grasps at a plaything in the hands of 
another, he is simply moved by the overpowering impulse 
to seize and handle, which is the outcome of natural curi- 
osity and muscular energy. To seize and handle things is 
a constitutional need in every normal child, and a most im- 
portant factor in his development. 

Out of this germ, however, there develops at a very early 
age the proprietary instinct, and, along with it, the opposite 
characteristics of genuine selfishness and jealousy on the 
one hand, and genuine altruism and disinterested generosity 
on the other. And it would be untrue to say of the average 
child, that he is wholly controlled by either one of these pas- 
sions, to the exclusion of the other. An impartial diagnosis 
of his disposition will reveal both tendencies. The average 
child develops strong evidences of jealousy and egotism. 
We are all familiar with the stormy scenes that are enacted 
when the child of two or three years of age is called upon 
to share with a little brother or sister those attentions which 
up to this time had been bestowed exclusively upon himself. 
There is something exceedingly pathetic in the genuine pain 
and sorrow of heart which he experiences when he finds 
himself compelled to submit to these new and unwelcome 
conditions. 

On the other hand, the average child develops unmistak- 
able evidences of a genuine altruism. Any careful observer 
of childhood may notice frequent outbursts of spontaneous 
generosity and disinterested affection, whose peculiar charm 
"lies in the very naivete and unconsciousness with which they 
are manifested. I give one example. A little boy of three 
expressed a desire to give some of his toys to a little crip- 
pled neighbor child, who had no playthings. When it was 
suggested to him that he might give some of his old, broken 
toys, he replied : " How can the poor little cripple boy play 
with broken toys, if I can't ? " 



CHAPTER IV. 

VOLITION. 

We now approach the most difficult as well as the most 
important part of our subject : the most difficult, because of 
the exceedingly complicated character of every act of will;- 
the most important, because of the vast influence which 
any one's theory of volition must exert upon his moral and 
religious ideas. Not only is it true that "a being is capable 
of education and morality in proportion as he is capable of 
will," but it is also true that the most widely separated 
views touching human responsibility and destiny, have 
grown out of apparently slight differences of opinion with 
regard to the nature and freedom of the will. The follow- 
ing theories are quoted to show the trend of contemporary 
opinion on the subject, and not to set forth the present 
writer's views. 

" Out of the desire of everything that has once occasioned 
pleasurable feelings, is gradually developed the child's 
will." In Preyer's view, the will is called into life by 

the union of two representations, viz. : 1st, that of the end 
desired ; 2nd, that of the movement necessary to attain the 
end. The latter is not absolutely necessary, and at a later 
period is no longer formed, except in the case of new move- 
ments. The idea of the end is sufficient, without that of the 
means. Will, then, is based upon, and grov/s out of, desire.-^ 

1 Preyer's theory of the origin of will is not, however, an empirical 
one, as the following quotation will show: "It is an error to think 

88 



VOLITION. 89 

In Guyau's opinion, also, a complete act of will involves 
representations of two sorts, viz. : Of the act about to be 
performed, and of another, contrary act, which might have 
been performed. Action, then, is the resultant of a struggle 
among tendencies.^ 

Perez says : " The will is born little by little from reflex, 
impulsive and instinctive movements, which, with the prog- 
ress of the faculties of perception and ideation, and after 
having been for a long time executed and varied, fall under 
the action (coup) of the attention, and become conscious, 
reflected, and, in a word, voluntary." Will in its negative 
form (inhibition), he holds to be also a matter at first of 
mechanism, unconscious and involuntary. It is a suppres- 
sion, or at least a reduction, of reflex, impulsive and instinc- 
tive movements, by the fact of an excitation of the brain, a 
sensation. Thus arrest consists at first simply in the sub- 
stitution of one tendency for another."^ 

Wundt, on the contrary, holds that there is no such thing 



that the will arises from impressions in youth ; , . . a will can never 
be created in a child from external experiences ; it must be allowed to 
develop itself from the inborn germ of will." 

1 "La pleine volonte, c'est-a-dire le deploiement total des energies 
interieures, suppose qu'a la rej)resentation de I'acte meme qu'on va 
accomplir, s'associe la representation affaiblie de I'acte contraire. Et 
ainsi, nous arrivons a cette conclusion : II n'y a pas d'acte pleinement 
voluntaire ou, ce que revient au meme, pleinement conscient, qui ne 
soit accompagn6 du sentiment de la victoire de certaines tendances 
interieures sur d'autres, consequemment d'une lutte possible entre ces 
tendances, consequemment enfin d'une lutte possible contre ces ten- 
dances" (Guyau). 

- See also Ribot, " Les Maladies de la Volonte," p. 8. Bain, " The 
Emotions and the Will," Part II. Chap. I., and compare Baldwin's 
"Deliberative Suggestion," in which various "coordinated stiuuili 
meet, affront, oppose, further one another, . . . response answering 
to appeal in a complex but yet mechanical way." 



90 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

as purely reflex and involuntary consciousness ; that activity 
of attention is in some degree present even in movements 
apparently the most mechanical.^ 

Professor James lays down, as the distinguishing mark of 
voluntary movements, an antecedent desire and intention to 
perform, and consequently a full 2^ revision of what the 
action is to be. He therefore designates voluntary move- 
ments as secondary functions of our organism, while " reflex, 
instinctive and emotional movements are all primary per- 
formances." He makes voluntary movements depend on 
memory-images of former involuntary ones. " When a par- 
ticular movement, having once occurred in a random, reflex 
or involuntary way, has left an image of itself in the mem- 
ory, then the movement can be desired again, proposed as 
an end, and deliberately willed. But it is impossible to see 
how it could be willed before. A supply of ideas of the 
various movements that are x>ossihle, left in the memory by 
experieyices of their involuntary performa7ice, is thus the first 
prerequisite of the voluntary life." 

It will be seen that all these views corroborate the posi- 
tion taken in the present Avork, that mental phenomena 
undergo a process of transformation, in virtue of which, 
from being predominantly physiological, they become pre- 
dominantly psychical. We see now the application of this 
law to movements or actions. The earliest child movements, 
in the opinion of these writers, are not voluntary, but only 
reflex, instinctive, etc, Intelligent apprehension of the end 
sought, and of the means by which that end is to be attained, 
has not yet taken place, and, we may add that, until it has 
taken place, the movement is no more entitled to be called an 
action than is the swaying of a branch in the breeze, or the 
" action " of the piston-shaft of a locomotive. The conscious 

^ " Menschen und Thierseele." 



VOLITIOK. 91 

subject must first take hold of the movement, and put him- 
self forth in intelligent direction of that movement toward 
a conceived and desired end, and then it becomes transformed 
into an action. It seems necessary also, in order to avoid 
misunderstanding, to express our dissent from the view held 
by some of these writers, that the will is a derived product, 
or result of mechanical movements, a something which has 
been brought to the birth by the "travail together" of 
accidental motions in an animal organism. It is an obvious 
hysteron ];)roteron to explain the rise of will by means of 
this principle of transformation, while the only possible way 
of explaining the transformation is by positing voluntary 
activity. It is said, for example, that will is born (!) little 
by little out of reflex and instinctive movements, which have 
come within the scope of the attention; and again that will 
is developed out of the desire of everything that has occa- 
sioned pleasurable feeling. Now both attention and desire, 
as we understand them, are impossible without volition. 
They involve active direction of the self toward the object, 
and this is volition. So far, then, from being the ante- 
cedents of will, they are modes of its manifestation, and 
instead of ascribing the birth of will to the transformation 
already spoken of, in virtue of which movements come 
within the scope of the attention, we should more correctly 
ascribe the transformation to the exercise of will. The will 
is the cause and not the effect of the transformation. It is 
correct enough to say with Preyer that will is developed in 
connection with these movements and desires — if by devel- 
opment is meant only growth and not genesis — but when it 
is asserted that will is generated out of actions to which 
attention and desire are directed, it is only necessary to ask : 
Out of what are attention and desire generated? to reveal at 
once the insufficiency of the explanation. 

This criticism is all the more necessary here, because 



92 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

Professor Preyer's classification of child-movements, — as 
the most scientific and exhaustive yet made, — is adopted in 
the following pages. It can be accepted in toto, as a 
description and classification without our subscribing in the 
least to any particular theory of will-genesis that may have 
been founded upon it. The classification is as follows. 
First, we have a multitude of movements, not involving 
peripheral stimuli, but proceeding entirely from internal 
conditions. They are simply the result of an overflow of 
nervous energy, and require only motor — not sensori-motor 
— processes. They are, of course, will-less, and are desig- 
nated impulsive movements. Secondly, we have those move- 
ments (very numerous in the new-born) which, though 
requiring peripheral stimuli, and, therefore, sensori-motor 
processes, do not involve active attention or effort, and are, 
therefore, will-less. These are the well-known sensori- 
motor reflexes. In the third place, there is a kind of move- 
ments — found in great abundance in the human being, and 
constituting, probably, the majority of the so-called actions 
of the lower animals — for which the physical and emotional 
organism is specially fitted by the action of heredity. These 
are the instinctive movements. Finally there supervene on 
all these the bona fide actions of the person, involving desire 
of end, attention to the object, and representation of, and 
deliberation upon, the means of attainment, as well as the 
conscious forth-putting of the self in effort towards the reali- 
zation of the represented end. These are the ideational, or 
consciously deliberated and voluntary movements. We shall 
consider these in this order, only premising that because 
any given movement is here classed as impulsive or reflexive, 
it does not necessarily follow that it is never to be found 
in any other class. A movement, the same outwardly, may 
be at one time impulsive and at another ideational. This 
is one application of the principle of transformation. 



TOLITIOX. 93 

I. Impulsive Movements. 

The majority of the embyronic movements belong to this 
class. From the time of "quickening," the foetus performs 
numerous muscular movements (mostly set on by processes 
of nutrition and circulation) prior to the first exercise of 
reflex sensibility. In the new-born they are still numerous, 
comprising all those spontaneous kickings and rollings, 
awkward muscle-movements and comical grimaces, so 
noticeable in the early weeks of life. The hands strike 
right and left and move toward the face without any definite 
object; the legs tramp and kick when the child is held up 
in the air ; the eyes may be observed to move before the lids 
are opened ; the intra-uterine posture is resumed on falling 
asleep; the limbs are stretched on awakening; in short, 
almost every muscle of the ' body is exercised without any 
assignable peripheral stimulus. The movements are often 
symmetrical (by accident), but usually at first asymmetri- 
cal. Some of them (as yawning and stretching) persist 
through life, but the majority have disappeared by the end 
of the second year. Many of them are unexpected by the 
child himself; he is evidently surprised to find himself per- 
forming a certain movement, and afterwards performs it 
voluntarily, with numberless repetitions, and evident pride 
in the newly discovered ability. 

The first smile doubtless belongs here, as also the peculiar 
crowing heard so frequently ia the first year; and the 
numerous "accompanying" movements made by the child 
(such as holding the hands in a certain strained position, 
with the fingers spread out, while drinking, and the dreamy, 
wandering motions of the eyes during the act of sucking). 
A sleeping child suddenly threw up one of his hands, which, 
coming into contact with the eye, pushed the lid open. The 
infant slept on with one eye open, — the pupil very much 



94 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

contracted — until by-and-by the hand dropped and the eye 
closed. 

Although possessing in themselves no direct volitional 
significance, yet these impulsive movements are indirectly 
of great importance, inasmuch as they are the ravr materials, 
upon which the gradually awakening child-will exercises 
itself, making them its own, and transforming them, by 
means of conscious activity, into voluntary actions properly 
so-called. 

II. Keflex Movements. 

These occur as the response of the nervous system to 
peripheral stimulation, without the participation of the idea. 
If they enter into consciousness at all, it is only during or 
after their performance. They are found in the adult in 
great abundance as well as in the child; and are very well 
exemplified in the sudden movements of the hands when 
one's hat is blown off in the street. Though heredity prob- 
ably plays a considerable part in facilitating them, yet they 
do not take place in the earliest infancy with that certainty 
and promptness by which they are characterized in later 
life, as we have seen in the case of eye movements. What 
seems to be transmitted is a potentiality, which needs expe- 
rience to transform it into an actuality. 

The law of transformation has an obvious application 
here. Indeed we see in the case of these movements a 
double transformation: that which was at first a reflex 
movement becomes afterwards a voluntary one ; and finally, 
by virtue of repetition, leading to the formation of a habit, 
it becomes once more reflex or automatic. Probably all 
mouth movements involved in the enunciation of articulate 
sounds, pass through all these stages, as we shall see later. 

E-eflex movements are of great importance in will-growth, 



VOLITION. 95 

since upon them the voluntary movements, properly so-called, 
supervene. On its negative side also (i.e., in inhibition) 
the will develops chiefly in connection with the repression 
of reflexes. 

In the earlier stages of foetal life, according to Preyer, no 
reflex movements can be elicited, be the stimuli never so 
strong and varied; and even after there have occurred many 
movements of an impulsive nature. But reflex excitabil- 
ity increases very rapidly in the later months, even gentle 
stroking calling forth many movements. Swallowing as a 
reflex occurs at this time; and foetal movements can be 
evoked by changes of temperature. Champneys says the 
curling up of the toes, and jerking away of the foot when 
the sole is tickled (which IMr. Darwin observed on the 
seventh day of life), can be produced in utero. Only from 
the beginning of extra-uterine life, however, does the reflex 
activity of the nervous system obtain full play. And here 
the earliest and most prominent are the various respiration 
reflexes. The first cry is undoubtedly of this character, 
since brainless children make themselves heard in the first 
minutes of life as well as normal children. ^ Sneezing, too, 
which in many new-born children takes the place of crying, 
is a pure reflex, as it continues to be through life, though 
the complex coordination of many muscles, by which it is 
accompanied, is not so complete in the child as in the man. 
Other reflex movements connected with respiration are 
coughing, wheezing, choking, laughing when tickled, hiccough- 
ing, and the like, all of which, with the exception of 
laughter, may probably be observed in the first week. A 
striking proof of the reflex sensibility of the respiratory 
apparatus is seen in the fact that a noise, just loud enough not 

1 See several cases cited by Taine, "Intelligence," Part I. Book IV. 
Chap. I. 



96 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

to awaken the sleeping child, has the effect of increasing the 
rapidity of the respirations. 

Starting at any sound or jar, does not occur at the very 
first, but makes its appearance early. Generally there is 
silence for a moment after the disturbance, as though the 
energies were temporarily paralyzed. Champneys observed 
this starting first in the fourth week, but the child would 
not start twice at the same noise, unless it was very loud. 
Children are very susceptible to nervous stimuli, as is evi- 
dent from the frequency of convulsions in infant life. 

Keflex movements of the limbs are numerous, prompt and 
early. On the seventh day Darwin tickled the sole of 
his child's foot with a piece of paper; the foot was jerked 
away and the toes curled up. He remarks : " The perfection 
of these involuntary movements shows that the extreme 
imperfection of the voluntary ones is not due to the state of 
the muscles, or of the coordinating centres, but to that of 
the seat of the will." On the fourth day another child 
clasped a finger laid in his hand. From the fourteenth 

day on, tickling the sleeping child's temple was followed 
by a movement of the hand toward the place, though the 
hand did not always find the right spot. The left hand 

did not always respond, in Preyer's experiments, to stimu- 
lus applied to the left side, .nor the right hand to the right 
side; but Pfliiger found the responses constant in this 
respect.^ There seem, indeed, to be two sorts of reflexes: 
the inborn (such as spreading the toes on tickling), which 
occur from the first hour of life with perfect regularity and 
accuracy ; and the acquired reflexes, which are neither prompt 
nor certain at first, but become so on repetition. 

Very important in this connection are the reflex eye- 



1 So also Baldwin. See " Infants' Movements " in /Science, Jan. 8, 
1892. 



VOLITION. 97 

movements of the new-born child. The examples given in 
the first chapter of the responses of the infant eye to 
impressions of light, — turning towards the light, following 
a moving light or brightly colored object, etc., — are mostly 
examples of reflex movements, as are also those movements 
of the eyes which follow touch-impressions on the lashes, 
lids, etc. According to Preyer, there are "six different 
regular reflex movements from the optic nerve to the motor 
oculi alone, which appear in the case of light impressions." 

Least developed of all in the earliest period are the j^ciif^' 
reflexes. The new-born in many cases makes no response 
whatever to the prick of a pin, as Genzmer has shown. The 
response takes place, however, Avhen the stimulus is such as 
to affect a large number of nerve ends at the same time (a 
slap for example). This tardiness of pain-reflexes in the 
new-born does not show that he is insensible to pain, — 
though he is, probably, less sensitive than the adult in this 
respect, — but simply that the nerve connections which make 
reflex movements possible, are in the case of pain sensations 
less developed than those of the skin and mucous membrane. 

Finally the inliibition of reflexes, by which the will of the 
child develops on its negative side, is very dilhcult, and 
therefore a late attainment. In one case it was observed as 
early as the tenth month, when* the child for the first time 
restrained his excretions; in another, during the first 
quarter of the second year, when the child checked an 
impulse to scratch ; and in a third, in the fifteenth month. 
In marked contrast to this is the inhibition of reflexes in 
the lower animals, where it often takes place before the end 
of the foetal period. 



98 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

III. Instinctive Movements. 

These differ from impulsive movements in that they do 
not occur in the absence of appropriate peripheral stimuli. 
There is in the child an inborn instinct to seize with the 
hand, but this movement takes place only when the palm 
comes into contact with an object. They differ from 
impulsive movements also in having an e?ic7 or purpose, 
though this end may not be known at the time of their per- 
formance.^ Besides the stimulus, they require a certain 
emotional condition. The child in a sorrowful frame of 
mind does not laugh when his toes are tickled. They differ 
from ideational movements in the absence of a pattern, and 
of any conscious effort, or previous representation. 

One of the strongest instincts in the child is to seize 
objects and carry them to his mouth. Attempts at this have 
been observed as early as the fourth day. This propensity 
to make the mouth the test-organ for all sorts of objects, 
has been explained by the hypothesis that the lips may have 
been used in conjunction with the hands in an earlier period 
of race-progress, much more extensively than at present. 
The movements of the hands to the mouth may be at first 
accidental, and then instinctive, as in painful teething. It 
finally becomes reflex through the formation of habits. 
The contraposition of the thumb in seizing objects is 
quite slowly learned (in one case as late as the 12th week). 
This is in marked contrast to the facility with which 
young monkeys, less than a week old, oppose the thumb 
in seizing. 

As to the rise of right or left-handedness, Professor Bald- 



1 " Instinct is . . . the faculty of acting in such a way as to pro- 
duce certain ends without foresight of the ends, and without previous 
education in the performance." 



VOLITION. 99 

win has made a large number of experiments, whose results 
may be summarized as follows : 

(1) No trace of preference for either hand was discernible 
so long as there were no violent muscular exertions made. 
In over 2000 experiments, one hand was preferred as often 
as the other. 

(2) From the sixth to the tenth month, the tendency to 
use both hands together was about twice as great as the 
tendency to use either hand alone. (The figures are : Num- 
ber of experiments, 2187; right hand used alone 585 times, 
left hand alone 568 times, both hands together 1034 times. ) 

(3) Eight-handedness developed under the pressure of 
muscular effort. Preference for tlie right hand in violent 
efforts in reaching appeared in the seventh and eighth 
months. Experiments made in the eighth month gave this 
result: Eight hand 74, left 5, both 1. Under the stimulus 
of bright colors, the right hand was employed 84 times, and 
the left hand only twice. ^ 

Often there is a period of left-handedness in children who 
afterwards become right-handed. Sigismund believes that 
most children up into the third year prefer to use both 
hands together. 

Among instinctive mouth movements the earliest and 
most perfect is sucking. Sometimes, however, even this 
movement is far from perfect at the beginning. Many of 
the earliest efforts are quite fruitless, owing to failure in 
coordination. This movement doubtless takes place before 
birth, since it may be observed from the first moments of 
life. On its development, Kussmaul remarks to the follow- 



1 Professor Baldwin sees, in the fact that preference for the right hand 
was developed only in connection with muscular effort, an argument 
in favor of the " innervation " theory. For the opposite opinion see a 
short article by Professor James in Science, 14 Nov., 1890. 

L.«fC. 



100 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

ing effect: An advance is made on the mere reflexes when 
the child sucks the finger thrust into his mouth, or the 
nipple of the breast. Here we have not only sensation, 
awakening movement, but also feelings of pleasure or dis- 
pleasure, with answering endeavors and mental representa- 
tions of the simplest kind. Finally the will learns to 
regulate these movements in the interests of the individual. 

Other instinctive mouth movements are biting (which 
begins about the fourth or fifth month, and supersedes suck- 
ing from the tenth month), cheiving (which is performed 
with perfect regularity from the fourth month), grinding the 
teeth (wliich is quite original, and probably practiced by all 
babes during teething), and licking (which is performed in 
the first twenty-four hours "hardly less adroitly than in the 
seventh month"). 

Learning to ivalk involves a whole series of preliminary 
accomplishments, first among which is the ability to hold 
the head in equilibrium, which may be accepted as the 
criterion of the rise of voluntary power. This is usually 
accomplished about the fourth month. The next stage is 
reached a month or two later in the ability to sit alone 
upright. When this is successfully accomplished for the 
first time, the soles of the feet are frequently turned towards 
each other — a partial re-assumption of the intra-uterine 
posture. To stand alone is the next stage ; and any one who 
has watched the attempts of a little child to stand upright 
and walk will be convinced that he is moved to this by a 
natural instinct.^ 

It is an important epoch in a child's life when he suc- 
ceeds in standing alone. Whole sets of muscles, heretofore 

1 Sigismund graphically describes the child's first attempts to stand 
in these words: "Das Kind ist selbst von seiner Verwegenheit iiber- 
rascht, steht angstlich mit weit gestellten Fussen, und lasst sich bald 
et was umsanf t nieder. ' ' 



VOLITION. 101 

scarcely used, are now brought into activity, and liis progress 
is, from this time on, more all-sided and symmetrical. 
Hitherto his locomotion has been only in the form of creep- 
ing (which is performed in a great variety of ways, some 
children paddling straight ahead on all fours, like little 
quadrupeds, some hitching along in an indescribable manner 
on their haunches, and some going backwards, crab-fashion) ; 
but for the child who has learnt to stand alone, the transi- 
tion to walking is, in a very literal sense, "only a step." 
The first conscious steps are taken very timidly, and with an 
evident fear of falling. But frequently the first steps are 
taken unconsciously. Sometimes a child who has learnt to 
walk, partially or wholly, reverts for a season to creeping, 
for no apparent reason. Children who have older brothers 
or sisters are likely to walk at an earlier age than others, on 
account of the example and assistance of these older ones. 
At first the feet are placed disproportionately wide apart, 
giving rise to a curious waddling motion; while sometimes 
a child 7'uns instead of walking, and staggers, with the body 
inclined forward, and the hands stretched out as though he 
were afraid of falling, the feet, too, being lifted higher than 
is necessary. Many children seem more amiable after they 
have learned to Avalk, doubtless on account of their newly 
acquired ability, which not only occupies their attention, 
but enables them to go more readily to the objects of their 
desire. 

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to call attention to the 
fact that a movement may be instinctive and yet not make 
its appearance at the very beginning of life ; nor to the fact 
that instincts are not absolutely invariable, but are subject 
both to inhibition by habits and also to natural decay from 
desuetude.^ 

1 See Professor James' chapter on Instinct, " Principles of Psychol- 
ogy," Vol. II. 



102 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

IV. Ideational Movements. 

Finally, in virtue of the aimless and will-less execution of 
vast numbers of movements of the nature of those already 
treated, — impulsive, reflexive and instinctive, — it at length 
comes to pass that movements are performed which are the 
expression of the conscious self, the index of ivill in the true 
and only proper sense of the word, involving a previous 
representation of the end sought, and (in their earlier stages) 
of the movements involved in attaining that end, as well as 
a deliberate forth-putting of the self in conscious effort 
towards the attainment. To such movements, and to such 
only, should the name of actions be applied. All others are 
only movements. It must not be supposed that the little 
child passes per saltum from the condition indicated in the 
previous sections of this chapter, to that of explicit self- 
conscious activity. Indeed, it would be a very false view 
of child-development that represented the various stages as 
following one another in rigid succession, with hard and 
fast lines showing where the one ends and the next begins. 
They are rather to be compared to surfaces, whose boun- 
daries, vaguely outlined, overlap each other. There are a 
few impulsive movements, and very many reflex and in- 
stinctive ones, persisting to the end of life. 

We shall find it convenient to follow Professor Preyer's 
subdivision of ideational movements into three classes. In 
the lowest class, we have movements of imitation, which, 
though indicating activity of will (at least in their later 
stages), yet depend on a model or pattern, and are never 
performed by the child unless he first observes their per- 
formance by others. Next, we have expressive movements, 
which, as the name indicates, are a more or less conscious 
expression of feelings and desires; and finally, the full- 
fledged deliberative actions. 



VOLITION. 103 

(a) Imitative Movemexts. — These may be divided into 
two specieSj viz. : Simjyle imitation, in which the movement 
is only an approximate imitation, and no second attempt is 
made ; and persistent imitation, " which marks the transition 
from suggestion to will, from the reactive to the voluntary 
consciousness." The former is exemplified in the single, 
isolated attempt on the child's part to reproduce a sound 
made by another person; the latter, in the repeated efforts 
of a girl of fourteen months to put a rubber on a pencil, 
after having seen her father do it. or of a boy of twelve 
months, to get a cord into the hole of a spool. 

Two points should be mentioned before we proceed to 
record observations in this connection. Eirst: When a 
child for the first time voluntarily imitates a given move- 
ment, which he has already performed involuntarily a 
number of times, he does it far less perfectly than when he 
did it without conscious imitation. '' If I clear my throat, 
or cough purposely, without looking at the child, he often 
gives a little cough likewise, in a comical manner. But if 
I ask: 'Can you cough?' he coughs, but generally copying 
less accurately." Second : It must not be supposed, even 

when the child imitates a movement deliberately and with a 
clear idea of it, that he understands in every case the mean- 
ing of the movement. One child, in the tenth month, had 
learned to imitate the movement of beckoning, but he 
showed by the expression of his face and the attendant gest- 
ures, that he did not in the least comprehend the significance 
of the beckoning. 

As early as the third and fourth months, according to one 
writer, children perform little tricks which indicate the 
buddings of the imitative propensity. Raw attempts at 
vocal imitation may be observed even in the second month, 
when the child makes a response to words addressed to him. 
This, however, is mechanical. In the third month the child 



104 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

will imitate looks, i.e., he will look at an object which others 
are looking at. Egger saw, in the sixth month, an instance 
of imitation, together with the act of recollection which it 
involves. Cliampneys says of his child: " About the thir- 
teenth week he began to appear to attempt to join in con- 
versation, with a variety of articulate sounds, if talking was 
going on in the room." Preyer observes: The first attempt 
at imitation occurred in the fifteenth week, the child making 
an attempt to purse the lips when one did it close in front 
of him. In the seventeenth week, the "protruding of the 
tip of the tongue between the lips was perfectly imitated 
once when done before the child's face, and the child in fact 
smiled directly at this strange movement, which seemed to 
please him." 

There is no point on which I find so much uniformity as 
this, that imitation begins during the second half of the 
first year. This is true of almost all children without 
exception, so far as I know, and extends not only to move- 
ments proper, but also to vocal imitation, as we shall see. 
A boy of seven months tried hard to say simple mono- 
syllables after his mother. Another is reported to have 
accomplished his first unmistakable imitations when seven 
months old, in movements of the head and lips, laughing, 
and the like. Crying was imitated in the ninth month, and 
in the tenth, imitation of all sorts was quite correctly exe- 
cuted, though even at the end of the first year new move- 
ments, and those requiring complex coordination, often 
failed. A child of eight and a half months, having seen 
his mother poke the fire, afterwards crept to the hearth, 
seized the poker, thrust it into the ash-pan, and poked it 
back and forth with great glee, chuckling to himself. 
Another child, in his tenth month, imitated whistling, and 
later, the motions accompanying the familiar " pat-a-cake, " 
etc. In his eleventh month he used to hold up the news- 



VOLITION. 105 

paper, and mumble in imitation of reading. Another 

boy, in his eleventh month, used to cough and sniff like his 
grandfather, and amused himself by grunting, crowing, 
gobbling and barking in imitation of the domestic animals 
and birds. A little girl of this age used to reproduce 

with her doll some of her own experiences, such as giving 
it a bath, punishing it, kissing it, and singing it to sleep. 
One fine morning in May I took the little boy, E,., for a 
walk through a beautiful avenue, where the trees on each 
side met overhead in a mass of foliage. These trees were 
full of birds, busy with their nest building, and full of song. 
The little fellow was fairly enchanted. He could not go 
on. Every few steps he would stop (at the same time pulling 
at my hand to make me stop, too), and looking up into the 
trees, with his head turned on one side, would give back the 
bird-song in a series of vv^arbling, trilling notes of indescrib- 
able sweetness. I very much doubt whether any adult voice, 
however trained, or any musical instrument, however com- 
plicated, could reproduce those wonderful inflections. The 
same boy, a little later, used to imitate with his voice the 
boys whistling in the street, giving the right pitch. 
Another boy, at thirteen months, brushes his hair, tries to 
put on his shoes and stockings, and many other similar 
things. Indeed the whole life of the child of this age is 

full of imitation. Going out with the girl, F., I observed 
that she did almost everything I did; I brushed some dust 
from my coat and she immediately "brushed" her dress in 
like manner. It is in fact difficult fully to realize how the 
child of this age is watching our every movement, and 
learning thereby. Xot only parents and teachers, but every 
one who comes in contact with the child, even casually and 
occasionally, contributes his share, whether he will or not, 
in the child's education. The moral of this is too obvious 
to require repetition. 



106 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

(6) Expressive Movements. — These arise out of those 
already treated of. Impulsive, reflex, instinctive and even 
the simpler imitative movements, are not intentional expres- 
sions of mental states. But a movement which was at first 
impulsive or reflex may become the manifestation of such 
states. The first cry and the first puckering of the mouth 
(which Kussmaul noticed in children less than an hour old, 
when a bitter substance was brought into contact with the 
tongue) are only the reaction of the organism to external 
stimuli. But later, both the cry and the gesture fall within 
the control of the will, and are transformed into the pur- 
posive utterances of the conscious self. Many, perhaps 
most, of the expressive movements are impulsive or other 
movements which have been thus transformed. 

The first so-called S7nUe, for example (which may be 
observed in children less than two weeks old), is simply an 
impulsive movement resulting from agreeable feeling; and 
a reflex laugh may be elicited from a child very early by 
tickling the soles of his feet. In one case the first real 
smiles were observed from the 26th day; and in the eighth 
week enjoyment of music was manifested by laughing and 
smiling, accompanied by lively movements of the limbs, and 
a bright, gleaming expression of the eyes. The imitative 
laugh began about the ninth month. Egger thinks the 

time when intelligence, properly speaking, appears, is marked 
by the advent of the laugh, which he observed for the first 
time after the fortieth day. Sigismund first observed a 
smile in tlie seventh week. Many children, he says, smile 
first in sleep; then soon after in response to the friendly 
looks of others. This responsive smile he believes is the 
first sign of consciousness of and response to sensations 
received from others. Many have observed the smile as 
early as the second and third or even the first week, but so 
far as I am aware, no one attributes conscious expression to 



VOLITION. 107 

the smile of a child less than a month old. Mr. Darwin 
believes he saw a smile of mental origin on the forty-fifth 
day. M.- Guyau thinks the smile is reflex in its origin. 
Tiedemann observed a smile in the second month, and genu- 
ine laughter in the third. So also several others. The 
boy, C, laughed aloud w^hen being undressed. He was then 
three months old. Three weeks later, when some one was 
reading aloud, he laughed and cooed until the reader was 
obliged to stop. He evidently thought the reading was in- 
tended for his special entertainment. A boy of the same 
age laughed aloud one day without any apparent cause ^^^\ 
The psychic development of the smile is well stated in the 
following words: "The smile begins when the infant first 
begins to be conscious of outside things; attention gradually 
becomes closer and more fixed; the smile at this stage is the 
mere stare, vacant at first, but growing steadily more intel- 
ligent and wondering in its appearance. About the third 
week this begins to relax very slightly into the appearance 
of pleasure. At this point there comes first more and more 
of a glow on the face — a beaming — then in a da}^ or two a 
very slight relaxation of the muscles, increasing every day. 
This dawning smile is often very beautiful, but it is not yet 
a smile. It is almost a smile, but I am confident no one 
will ever know the exact day when the baby fairly and 
intelligently for the first time smiles.''' 

On Pouting and Purshig the Lips as an expressive move- 
ment, Preyer observes in substance : There are three sorts 
of pouting, differing from each other according to the cause. 
First, there is a x^rotrusion of the lips, which may be 
observed in some children from the first hour of life, and 
which is purely impulsive. Secondl}^, the pursing of the 
mouth when attention is closely strained (as in learning to 
write or draw). This appears as early as the fifth week, 
and continues to the end of life in many instances. Thirdly, 



108 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

the pout of sullenness, which makes its appearance much 
later than the others, and is not due to imitation (for it 
occurred where there had been no opportunity for imita- 
tion), but is undoubtedly hereditary. 

The kiss, as an expressive 'action, is, on the other hand, 
not hereditary, but acquired. Some nations do not practice 
it. The child has to learn it, and he is somewhat late in 
learning it, as observations show. Very seldom does the 
child understand its meaning, or give it spontaneousl}^, until 
the second year of life. 

The child's cry is at first not expressive; and when it 
becomes so, it varies greatly in different children. Accord- 
ing to one observer, " Crying took place at first without any 
squaring of the mouth, the sound was that of 'nga ' as 
expressed in German. It must have been prouaced by clos- 
ing the fauces by contact of the pillars of the fauces and the 
soft palg^te, so as to send all the sound through the nose. 
Vowel sounds were then produced by separating the soft 
palate and the pillars of the fauces, and allow^ing the sound 
to come through the mouth." He goes on to say that 

the child seemed to cry at first for three reasons : Loneliness 
or fright, hunger, or pain; and these cries seemed all differ- 
ent in character; but he does not say when this difference 
became apparent. The first crying is only squalling; it 
has no expressive intonations. The transition from the 
meaningless a'y to the significant voice, with different cries 
to express different mental states, has been observed as 
early as the second month, and in other cases during the 
third month. The little girl W., when four months old, 
" expressed hunger by cries that were short and shrill, fol- 
lowing each other rapidly, and not so loud as other cries." ^ 

1 For further remarks on this transition from the meaningless to 
the significant cry see Chap. V., sec. III. 



VOLITION. 109 

Weejjing. — The new-born do not shed tears, no matter 
how hard they cry. At a later period they cry and weep 
together, and they can also cry without weeping. But to 
weep without crying comes much later, and is compara- 
tively rare in childhood. One or two cases are reported of 
tears being shed by children two weeks old, but most of the 
observations point to a later date. In one case the first 
tears were shed at the end of the third week, in another in ' 
the fourth week, while in other cases tears were seen to flow 
down the face in the sixth, ninth, twelfth, fourteenth, fif- 
teenth and sixteenth weeks respectively. Darwin's child 
shed tears in the twentieth week, but as early as the tenth 
his eyes were moist in violent crying. He thinks that 
children do not usually shed tears until the second, third or 
fourth month. From the second year onward, children 
weep much more easily than at an earlier period, and, later 
still, the inhibition both of tears and crying is a significant 
mark of the growing power of the will. 

Nodding the head in assent, and shaking it in refusal, are 
at first entirely different from each other in mental signifi- 
cance. The latter is an in-born reflexive or instinctive 
movement, while the former is acquired. The child who 
has satisfied his hunger, will turn his head from side to 
side in refusal of further proffered nourishment when less 
than a week old. This movement becomes expressive almost 
from the first. It is generally accompanied by the partial 
closing of the eyes, and often by arm-movements of "ward- 
ing off." Nodding in one case was not imitated until the 
fourteenth month, and even then very imperfectly. Even 
after it w^as finally learnt, its meaning was often confounded 
with that of shaking the head. The child would shake his 
head for "yes," and nod it for "no." In another case, both 
nodding and shaking the head had become expressive by 
the fifteenth month. 



110 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

Other examples of expressive movements which may be 
observed in children at a very early age, are the following : 
Clasping the hands together, or waving them very quickly 
back and forwards, or up and down, to express eager desire 
for something; reaching out with uplifted hands and ex- 
tended arms for the same purpose, or even sometimes clap- 
ping the hands quickly together, after the manner of an 
" encore ;'' violent straightening of the back in anger; a 
curious bearing, almost indescribable, showing vanity; be- 
sides several gestures expressive of affectation, and a variety 
of facial expressions and vocal inflections impossible to 
describe. "Jealousy, pride, pugnacity, covetousness, lend 
to the childish countenance a no less characteristic look 
than do generosity, obedience, ambition." All these facial 
expressions and bodily movements " appear in greater purity 
in the child, who does not dissemble, than they do in 
later life. 

(c) Deliberative Movements. — Finally we reach that 
stage — not necessarily subsequent to all the others, but 
partially synchronous with them — in which the will rises 
to its proper place as "master of ceremonies," brings into 
subjection the impulsive and instinctive tendencies of which 
we have spoken, and assumes control of the child's activities. 
To express this truth by saying that the faculty of will has 
come into being, is misleading, simply because there is no 
" faculty " of will considered as a separate entity. The will 
is the perso7i considered as active; and, instead of saying 
that, with the advent of what we call ideational movements, 
the will is born, and with that of deliberative movements it 
is perfected, it would be more correct to say that these move- 
ments are the first outward indications that the child is 
becoming the conscious master of his own activity. 

In order to perform deliberative or voluntary actions in 



VOLITION. Ill 

the proper sense of the term, it is necessary that the chikl 
should have had ex^^erience of a large number of movements 
of the involuntary sort. For, like the man, he can create 
nothing; the most he can do, is to combine and separate, to 
analyze and sythesize the materials that come to his hand. 
Man's greatest achievements consist simply in modifying, 
changing, separating, combining and rearranging familiar 
material. So the child in all his numerous movements 
accomplishes nothing absolutely new; he only uses old 
movements, varying them it is true, in numberless wa3^s, 
but really adding nothing of his own creation. Therefore 
the exercise of voluntary activity requires memory of invol- 
untary muscular movements previously executed. For a 
voluntary movement is one which is pictured beforehand in 
tlie imagination, or, if the movement itself be not thus pic- 
tured, the end of the movement, at least, must be. But in 
order to represent, we must fiY^t present ; or in other words, 
in order to imagine a movement, either in process or in 
product, that movement must first have been perceived; and 
this means that the child must have seen it performed by 
others, and felt it performed by himself — involuntarily — 
before he could perform it deliberately. So we find that 
deliberative movements are gradually acquired, and super- 
vene upon a vast number of impulsive, reflexive and instinc- 
tive movements. For example, grasping with the hand is 
at the beginning a pure reflex, as we have seen, but gradu- 
ally, after many repetitions, this movement is remembered; 
actual performance of the movement has led to the formation 
of a mental image of it, as well as a more perfect physio- 
logical adjustment favoring its performance. So that when 
desire, in the proper sense of the word, takes place, atten- 
tion is bestowed upon the object sought and on the movement 
involved, and the action is deliberately performed. So we 
see that a strictly deliberative movement — an action — . 



112 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

presupposes desire, attention and memory-images. It is 
therefore not to be expected that we shall find bona Jide 
actions in very young infants. Preyer found no movement 
in the first three months which could be announced with 
absolute certainty as a deliberative movement. Tiedemann 
saw the first intended holding of objects in the fourth month. 
Another child, at six months, showed a great deal of per- 
sistent effort. " He would over and over again seem to be 
trying to solve the problem of the hinge to his nursery 
door, patiently and with rivetted attention opening and 
shutting the door. Day after day saw him at his self- 
appointed task." A boy of eleven months, in striking 
a spoon against another object, would suddenly change it to 
the other hand, apparently testing whence the noise pro- 
ceeded. When fourteen months old, while playing with a 
tin can, he put the cover on and off "not less than seventy- 
nine times without stopping a moment, his attention mean- 
time strained to the utmost." Indeed the child's attention 
seems capable of surprising prolongation in connection with 
muscular movement, A little girl of nineteen months 
brought out her toy blocks to shoAV me. I helped her to 
build houses with them. Delighted with this play, she 
showed a surprising persistence ; and when I grew tired and 
wished to stop, she made me keep on longer. It is by 
means of this incessant activity that the child develops 
both mentally and physically. 

The ability to inhibit movements, though often difficult 
to observe with accuracy, seems to me one of the most cer- 
tain criteria of the presence of will. To keep himself from 
moving is surely more difficult than to move, in a being so 
constitutionally restless as the average child. Children of 
five months, others of six, and others of seven or eight 
months, have been observed to refrain from reaching for 
an object that was much beyond their reach. The little 



VOLITION. lis 

boy K., when threatened with punishment for continued 
crying, is able to desist. 

The development of desh-e and attention has perhaps been 
sufficiently indicated in the foregoing paragraphs. Desire, 
in the proper sense of the word, is the primary stage in 
every volition; and no volition can take place without atten- 
tion. The child's attention is comjyaratively weak and inter- 
mittent. He cannot attend to the unimpressive, the stimulus 
must be strong, must be on the motor side, and must be 
frequently renewed. His attention is very easy to obtain^ 
but very hard to retain. This double fact in his nature 
renders him capable of education, but at the same time makes 
his education a gradual process, which must consist largely 
in the formation of right habits in him through imitation, 
to which, as we have seen, he is so excessively prone. 
M. Guyau indeed goes so far as to say that by a judicious 
use of the child's susceptibility to imitative suggestion, we 
may make of him almost what we please. And this seems 
indeed not far from the truth, when we consider the child's 
wonderful susceptibility to every passive impression, and 
his no less wonderful predisposition to reproduce it in his 
own untiring activity. 



CHAPTER V. 

LANGUAGE. 1 

The profound psychogeiietic significance of the language 
function, not only as an iiLdex of mind development, but 
also as di factor in that development, justifies its treatment 
in a separate chapter. Such separate treatment would not 
otherwise be justifiable, inasmuch as language does not con- 
stitute a new psychic phenomenon, or class of phenomena, 
differing in any essential respect from those already treated. 
It rather partakes of the nature of them all, and consti- 
tutes a grand product of their conjoint operation. 

In order to the emploj'ment of language of any sort,- 
there must be, in the first place, sensation. If sounds are 
to be intelligently uttered, they must first be heard. The 
child who is born deaf, and continues in that condition, does 

1 This chapter first appeared as an article entitled, " The Language 
of Childhood," in the American Journal of Psychology^ Vol. VL No, I. 

2 Although our chief attention is occupied here with thq spoken 
word, this is by no means the only form of language. In its broadest 
sense, language includes every means by which thought is communi- 
cated ; and therefore the gestures of the deaf-mute, and the hieroglyphic 
characters on Egyptian monuments, as well as the written manuscript 
and the printed page, are as really language as the most eloquent oral 
paragraphs, because they are the expression of some one's thought. As 
Broca says, language is ' ' the faculty of establishing a constant rela- 
tion between an idea and a sign," whatever that sign may be. All 
that can be said, therefore, concerning the psychological importance 
of the spoken word, applies equally, mutatis mutandis, to every other 
means of communication. 

114 



LANGUAGE. 115 

not learn to speak. In the second place, language presup- 
poses perception and judgment. The sounds must not only 
be heard, they must be understood. A meaning must be 
attached to them. Otherwise they will never be given back 
by the child as the expression of his thought ; i.e., as his 
language. In the third place, it is essential to any advance 
beyond the merest linguistic rudiments, that abstraction and 
generalization take place ; for the communication of thought, 
in its highest forms, cannot take place until there has been 
attained the comprehension of the general as distinguished 
from the particular, and of the abstract as distinguished 
from the concrete.^ Finally, passing from the cognitive to 
the volitional aspect of mind, it is obvious that language, 
in its most essential characteristic — i.e., as expression — 
belongs to the will. Every expression of thought, whether 
it be word or mark or gesture, is the result of an act of will, 
and as such may be classed among movements. 

It is not, therefore, as constituting a new order of facts, 
different from thoughts and feelings and volitions, but rather 
as illustrating the development of these, and entering as a 
factor in that development, that language receives this sep- 
arate place. We judge of the child's mental development 
largely by the rapidity of his progress towards a skillful 
manipulation of the instruments of expression. 



I. Heredity vs. Education in Language. 

There is no psychological problem to the solution of which 
a study of the infant mind may be expected to contribute 
more largely than this : What is hereditary, and what is 

1 On the other hand, thought itself cannot attain to any great degree 
of generality without the aid of language. Thought and language are 
mutually helpful, and conduce each to the development of the other. 



116 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

acquired, in the sphere of language ? Long before maturity 
is attained, such an abundance of acquired material has been 
added to our original store, and through constant repetition, 
the two have become so transformed, modified and assimi- 
lated in character, that we are no longer able to distinguish 
the one from the other. But from the beginning it was not 
so. If a child executes a gesture, or utters a sound, at an 
age so early as to exclude the possibility of imitation or 
spontaneous invention on his part, we may conclude that 
the sound or the gesture — or, at least the disposition to 
express himself in this manner — has been born with him. 
Here only, then, are we able to apply the logical method of 
difference to the solution of the problem. 

It is obvious at a glance, that speech is a product of the 
conjoint operation of these two factors : heredity and edu- 
cation. If, on the one hand, we observe the initial babbling 
of the infant, and notice its marvelous flexibility, and the 
enormous variety of its intonations and inflections — and 
this at an age so early as to preclude observation and imita- 
tion of others, — it will be apparent that the child has come 
into the world already possessing a considerable portion of 
the equipment by which he shall in after years give expres- 
sion to his feelings and thoughts. If, on the other hand, 
we carefully observe him during the first two years of his 
life, and note how the intonations, and afterwards the words, 
of those by whom he is surrounded, are given back by him 
— at first unconsciously, but afterwards with intention — 
and how, when conscious imitation has once set in, it plays 
thenceforth the preponderating role, — we shall readily be- 
lieve that, without this second factor, but little progress 
would be made towards speech-acquirement. 

It may be well to consider briefly how these two factors 
enter at every point in the development of language. For 
example, in order to speak, the child must possess first of 



LANGUAGE. 117 

all a sensory and motor physiological apparatus. This- phys- 
iological apparatus, including the auditory structure for the 
reception of sounds, the inter-central and centro-motor cells 
and nerve tracts for the accomplishment of connection be- 
tween the impression and the expressiou, and the organs of 
vocal utterance (larynx, palate, tongue, lips, teeth), is his 
inheritance from the past ; but in the new-born child it is 
all imperfect, both in structure and in functioning; and its 
development requires the constant moulding influence of 
those educating agencies by which the human being is sur- 
rounded from the moment of his entrance into the world. 

Again, the disposition to utter sounds of all sorts, and to 
express states of feeling by them, is undoubtedly inherited, 
since, from the very beginning of life, and quite indepen- 
dently of all example, the child constantly exercises his vocal 
organs.^ But in spite of this, so inadequate is heredity 
alone, that the child will not learn the language of his par- 
ents, unless he be in the society of those who employ it. 
If brought up among savages, he will speak their language ; 
if among wolves, he will howl.- 

In making this statement, we do not overlook those re- 
markable cases in which children have invented a language 
of their own, quite different from that spoken around them ; 
and persisted for some time in using the former and entirely 
ignoring the latter. Mr. Horatio Hale gives an account of 
five different cases in which this has occurred, two in the 
United States and three in Canada. In one case this in- 
vented vocabulary consisted of twenty-one root-forms^ out 

1 "Le langage est en nous une faculte si naturelle, que des la prem- 
iere enfance, I'exercer est un besoin et un plaisir." — Egger. 

2 " It is found that young birds never have the song peculiar to their 
species, if they have not heard it ; whereas, they acquire very easily 
the song of almost any other bird with which they are associated." — 
Alfred Russell Wallace, Xatural Selection. 



118 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

of which, by conibination and modification, the children 
developed a complete language, by which, with the aid of 
gesture, all their wants could be communicated; and in all 
the cases the invented language was sufficient for all inter- 
course as between the children themselves ; and was per- 
sistently used until the children were finally broken of it, 
by being separated or sent to school. In all these cases, 
it is to be observed, the child did not learn the language 
of his parents in the absence of those who employed it. It 
is also to be noted that the new language was invented, not 
by one child, but by two. Language is iJossihle in all normal 
children ; it becomes actual only in the presence of a com- 
panion. But given the companion, and scarcely any limit 
can be set to the possibilities of development. Indeed, Mr. 
Hale has given us a theory of language, in which the origin 
of linguistic stocks is attributed to the inventiveness of 
children who have become separated from their tribe when 
very young ; and in the light of such facts as those given 
above, the theory seems highly probable. On the other 
hand, that the child shall speak any specific tongue now 
existing, depends on his education. He does not inherit 
any particular tongue or dialect. Some think he will acquire 
his mother-tongue with greater facility than any other, yet 
even this may be doubted. '•' Speech is hereditary, but not 
any particular form of speech." There may be an in- 

herited tendency to find cei'tain sounds difficult, such as sh 
to the ancient Ephraimite, or tli to the modern Frenchman, 
but this is only a tendency, and does not prevent the child 
from learning any language perfectly, if his education begins 
early enough. 

Again, the careful study of the language of signs makes 
it quite clear that many gestures are inherited {e.g., holding 
out the hands to express desire, whicli is world-wide, and 
is executed by children who have never seen it done), but 



LANGUAGE. 119 

the development of gesture into anything like a complicated 
system of expression, is quite dependent on the social en- 
vironment. Of course this is only another way of saying 
that language, being the instrument for the communication 
of thought, is not developed in the absence of beings to 
whom thought can be communicated. 

Thus, then, the case seems to stand with regard to the 
respective spheres of heredity and education in the produc- 
tion of language. As regards the child's present endowment 
and capabilities at the moment of his entrance into the 
world, "he is the product, the result of the generations 
which have preceded him ; he is the visible link wliich con- 
nects the past with the future ; " but with regard to that 
which he is to be, and the legacy which he in his turn shall 
transmit to those who shall succeed him, he is very largely 
dependent on his physical and social environment ; and all 
those who compose that environment, assist, whether they 
will or no, in his education.^ 



II. The Physiological Development. 

If the question were asked, " Why does not the new-born 
child talk ? " two answers might be given. In the first 
idace, there is a psychological reason, viz., he has, as yet, 
no ideas, and has, therefore, nothing to say. In the sec- 
ond place, there is a physiological reason, viz., his speech- 
apparatus is as yet so imperfectly developed that he could 
not express ideas if he had them. 

In the same way, if the question were asked, Why does 

1 "La mere, an restc, ou la nourrice, ne sont ici que des institutrices 
en chef ; car tous ceux qui entourent I'enfant au berceaii qui con- 
versent en sa presence, participent, sans s'en douter, a cette education 
fondamentale " (Dei;&rando), 



120 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

any person ever lose tlie power of speech ? similar answers 
miglit be given. He either loses his ideas, through some 
mental disorder, or he loses the power of expression through 
some physiological disorder. The two cases are, moreover, 
pa,rallel in another sense, inasmuch as the acquirement of 
ideas in the one case, and their failure in the other, are 
closely associated with, if not indeed quite dependent upon, 
the presence or absence of the physiological functions. 

The physiological reason, then, why the child does not 
yet speak, lies in the undeveloped state of the speech- 
apparatus. " The lungs are not yet developed in a degree 
and manner sufficient for articulate speech. The expiration 
needs to be strong, and . exactly regulated. Now, in the 
infant, the pectoral muscles are still developed in a very 
small degree; the breathing is accomplished much more 
through the fall of the diaphragm than through the active 
extension of the pectoral cavity. Hence, breathing move- 
ments are more superficial and more irregular than in later 
years. Artificial speech requires complete control of the 
breathing mechanism, which the child has not yet got. To 
his speech-instrument is still wanting a large number of 
strings, whistles and registers. The organs of speech are 
the lungs, air tubes, larynx and vocal cords, the mouth, 
with tongue, palate, lips and teeth. The lungs create the 
stream of air ; the tone and voice are formed by the larynx ; 
according as the vocal cords open wider or come nearer, 
arises the deeper or higher tone. The form of the tone 
(i.e., vowel a or o, etc., consonant h or/, etc.) depends on 
the form of the mouth at the time. Now the larynx is still 
very small and undeveloped in its form, and so with the 
tongue, the lips, and the muscles moving them ; and as for 
the teeth, they are still entirely wanting." .The unde- 

veloped condition of the auditory apparatus, and of the 
brain, have also to be considered in this connection. 



LANGUAGE. 121 

On the other hand, it needs to be borne in mind that the 
relation between the organs of speech and speech itself is 
a reciprocal one. If speech depends on the organs, it is 
also true that the organs depend on speech, and are not 
developed, except by exercise. As one learns to play on 
the harp by playing on the harp, so the child learns to 
speak by speaking. The exercise of the vocal organs de- 
velops those organs, so that they become capable of higher 
exercise. 

The lungs first appear, early in the embr3'onic stage, as a 
single median diverticulum from the ventral wall of the 
oesophagus, which soon becomes dilated towards the two 
sides in the form of primitive protrusions or tubercules, 
while the root, communicating with the oesophagus, remains 
single. The foetal lungs contain no air, and lie, packed in 
a comparatively small compass, at the back of the thorax. 
They undergo very rapid and remarkable changes after 
birth, in consequence of the commencement of respiration. 
They expand so as to completely cover the pleural portions 
of the pericardium, their margins become more obtuse, 
and their whole form less compressed. The entrance of the 
air changes their texture so that it becomes more loose, 
light and spongy, and less granular ; while the great quan- 
tity of blood, which, from this time on, circulates through 
them, greatly increases their weight, and changes their 
color. The proportion of their weight to that of the body 
becomes nearly twice as great as before, while, at the same 
time, their specific gravity, after the beginning of respira- 
tion, becomes very much less. 

The trachea, or windpipe, which connects the lungs with 
the larynx, is in the embryo almost closed, its anterior and 
posterior walls being very near each other. The small 
space remaining is filled with mucus. With the exercise 
of respiration, the mucus is expelled, and the tube itself 



122 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

gradually becomes more distended, but its anterior wall does 
not for some time become convex. With the growth of the 
child, the cartilages which form the "ribs" of the tra- 
chea, become stronger and better able to bear their part 
in the forcible expiration of air which is required for 
speech. 

The larynx, which is the organ most directly concerned 
in the production of "voice" or "tone," is an exceedingly 
complicated mechanism, consisting of a framework of carti- 
lages comprising no less than nine distinct parts, connected 
by elastic membranes or ligaments, two of which, from their 
specially prominent position, are named the true vocal cords. 
In speaking and singing, these cartilages are moved relatively 
to one another by the laryngeal muscles. The larynx is 
situated at the upper end of the trachea, the mucus lining 
of the two organs being continuous. At the time of birth, 
this organ is very small and narrow, and continues com- 
paratively insignificant up to the period of adolescence, 
when rapid and remarkable changes take place, especially 
in the case of the male, where it becomes much more promi- 
nent, and the pomum adami protrudes so to be perceptible 
at the throat. 

The tongue is composed very largely of muscular fibres, 
running in various directions, such as the superior and 
inferior lingual muscles, which move the organ up and 
down, and the transverse fibres, by which it is moved from 
side to side. Besides these, we have the various glossal 
muscles, which, though extrinsic to the tongue itself, yet 
are implicated in its operations. These muscles are all 
more or less flabby in the foetus and the new-born, and 
become strong only by nutrition and exercise. A similar 
remark applies to the lips ; while the teeth, without which 
the dental and labio-dental consonants can never be properly 
pronounced, are at the beginning of life entirely absent. 



LANGUAGE. 123 

though the first steps toward their fovmation take place as 
early as the seventh week of the period of gestation. 

The hrain of the foetus is comparatively deficient in con- 
volutions, and presents a smooth, even appearance. The 
first of the primary fissures to appear is the fissure of 
Sylvius, which is visible during the third month. The 
other primitive sulci also begin to appear about this time, 
and by the end of the fifth month are well established. 
The secondary sulci make their appearance from the fifth 
or sixth month on. The first of these to be seen is the 
fissure of Eolando. "By the end of the seventh month, 
nearly all the chief features of the cerebral convolutions 
and sulci have appeared. The last fissures to appear are 
the inferior occipito-temporal, and a small furrow crossing 
the end of the calloso-marginaL" But long after the 

extra-uterine life begins, the child-brain is still deficient in 
many of the higher processes, the association fibres being the 
last to develop. The convolutions are for a long time com- 
paratively simple, and their increasing complexity as life ad- 
vances stands to the exercise of the various faculties, partly 
in the relation of antecedent, and partly in that of consequent. 

Speech, then, in the little child is a potentiality, though 
not an actuality. He is, as it were, in possession of the 
machine, but the belts have not yet been adjusted to the pul- 
leys, nor has he yet learned to handle the instrument. The 
inability to speak is not, therefore, an abnormal state at 
the beginning of life, any more than the inability to write, 
or swim, or play the piano. It is merely an imperfect 

state. But the inability to learn to speak is abnormal, and 
its cause must be sought, not in immaturity, but in abnor- 
mality of the physiological or psychological structures and 
processes involved. The one is an unnatural condition, 
into which the child has fallen ; the other a natural condi- 
tion, out of which he will gradually rise. 



124 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

III. The Phonetic and Psychic Development. 

We shall here, first of all, give a sort of outline history 
of the speech-progress of the average child during the first 
two years, generalizing from a large number of actual obser- 
vations (made by different persons on different children) 
and proceeding by periods of six months each; then we 
shall give summarized statements of a number of child- 
vocabularies that have been carefully compiled at different 
ages ; and finally, we shall examine what general conclu- 
sions may be drawn from the material at hand, and set 
down as empirical laws, awaiting further substantiation. 
I say "empirical laws," because children differ so much 
from each other, and reliable observations are so compara- 
tively scanty, that, for the present, general statements must 
be held in abeyance, or made only tentatively. 

First Six Months. — " In Thuringia," says Sigismund, 
" they call the first three months 'das dumme Vierteljahr,' " 
and during the second three months, according to Schultze, 
no advance is made on the first. It might seem, then, that 
in this first half-year there is nothing worthy of our attention 
in the matter of language. This, however, is very far from 
being the case, for in this period a most important appren- 
ticeship is going on. The little child, even in the cradle, 
and before he is able to raise himself to a sitting post- 
ure, is receiving impressions every waking moment from the 
environment; is hearing the words, seeing the gestures, and 
noting — in • a manner perhaps not purely involuntary — 
the intonations of those around him ; and out of this mate- 
rial he afterwards builds up his own vocabulary. Not 
only so, but during this period, that peculiarly charming 
infantile babble (which Ploss calls "das Lallen") begins, 
which, though only an "awkward twittering," yet con- 



LANGUAGE. 125 

tains in rudunentary form nearly all the sounds which 
afterwards, by combination, yield the potent instrument of 
speech. A wonderful variety of sounds, some of which 
afterwards give the child difficulty when he tries to produce 
them, are now produced automatically, by a purely impul- 
sive exercise of the vocal muscles ; in the same way as the 
child at this age performs automatically many eye-move- 
ments, which afterwards become difficult, or even impossi- 
ble. M. Taine thinks that " all shades of emotion, wonder, 
joy, willfulness and sadness" are at this time expressed 
by differences of tone, equaling or even surpassing the 
adult. 

The child's first act is to cry.^ This cry has been vari- 
ously interpreted. Semmig calls it " the triumphant song 
of everlasting life," and describes it as " heavenly music " 
(himmlische Musik) ; Kant said it was a cry of wrath, and 
others have spoken of it as a sorrowful wail on entering 
this world of sin ; or as the foreboding of the pains and 
sorrows of life. It seems more scientific, though less 
poetic, to accept the explanation of the " unembarrassed 
naturalist," who sees in it nothing more nor less than the 
expression of the painfulness of the first breathing — the 
rush of cold air upon the lungs. 

A more important point is the relation of this first vocal 
utterance to the speech that is to follow. The cry at first 
is merely an automatic or reflex " squall," without expres- 
sive modulation or distinctive timbre ; the same cry serves 
to express all sorts of feelings. But very soon it becomes 
differentiated and assumes various shadings to express 
various mental states. This differentiation beofins at differ- 



1 "Sobald das Kind zur Welt geboren ist, fangt es an gellend zu 
schreien." "The child is bom into the world! He enters it 

struggling ; a scream is his first utterance." 



126 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

ent times in different children. A girl only fifteen days 
old expressed her desire to be fed by a particular sort of 
cry. In another case, the cry had ceased to be a mere 

squall by the end of the first month. In another, the feel- 
ings of hunger, cold, pain, joy and desire were expressed by 
different sounds before the end of the fifth week. Others 
report the transition from the " cry " to the " voice," 
involving cooperation of the mouth and tongue, at different 
times, but all within the first three months. 

These cries are variously described. According to one, 
" the cry of pain is generally longer continued than the cry 
of fear." Another speaks of the cry of fear as " short 

and explosive," while hunger is expressed by a long drawn 
out wail. Another child at two months expressed 

pleasure and pain by different forms of the vowel a. Sigis- 
mund's boy, in his sixth month, expressed pleasure by a pe- 
culiar crowing shout, accompanied by kicking and prancing. 

The next step is taken when these cries and babblings 
assume an articulate character. The alphabetic sounds 
begin to be heard. Of these, the vowels usually precede 
the consonants ; and of the vowels, a with its various shad- 
ings is generally the first to appear. ^ In one case the fol- 

1 It is necessary at this point to adopt a system of diacritical marks, 
as in all that follows the child's pronunciation is of great importance. 
We shall, therefore, adopt the following system, and shall take the 
liberty of changing, wherever necessary, the spelling of the recorded 
observations, for the sake of uniformity : 

a as in calm. e or ee as in eat, feet, etc. oo as in food. 

a as in fat. i as in pit. bo as in foot. 

a as in fate. i as in ice. n as in up. 

a as in awl. o as in pot. u as in ii^e. 

a (German a umlaut), o as in old. u (German u umlaut)^ 

e as in pet. o (German o umlaut). 

Some changes will also be made in the use of consonants. For 



LANGUAGE. 127 

lowing series was developed: d-a-u. In another, the 

sound of a-a, as an expression of joy, was heard in the 
tenth week. According to Lobische, the vowels devel- 

oped in this order : a-e-o-u-i. One child began with a, and 
then proceeded to ai-d-au-d, while the pure sound of o was 
late in appearing. In another case all the vowels were 
heard in the hrst five months, a being the most frequently 
employed ; and in another, the primitive a (of which the 
child's first cries largely consisted) became differentiated 
into the various vowel-sounds during the first month. 
Preyer reports the use of the vowel-sounds in the following 
order: iid-ao-ai-iiao-d-o-a-d-u-e-d-i-u; and Sigismund in the 
following : a-d-u-ei-o-i-d-ii-du-au. 

Long before the sixth month, the primitive vowels are 
combined with one another (as we see) and with consonants, 
to produce the first syllabic utterances. These first sylla- 
bles are, for the most part, mechanical. In a great many 
of the cases under consideration, the first consonants to 
make their appearance are the labials, b-20-m, and these are 
almost always initial at first, and not final. The easy con- 
sonant m, combined in this way with the easy vowel a, 
yields the familiar combination ma, which, by spontaneous 
reduplication, becomes mama. In a similar manner, jxtpa, 
baba (afterwards baby) and the like, are constructed. The 
labials are not always, however, the first consonantal sounds 
uttered. Sometimes the gutterals {g or k) precede them ; 
and the two consonants which are usually the last to appear 
(viz., r and I) are used by some children quite early. In 
the case of the boy A., the first sounds were gutteral, gg, 



example, such words as corner, chorus, coffee, etc., will be spelled 
with a ^•; words like cigar, centre, cellar, etc., with an s; and in such 
words as write the silent ?(? will be omitted. Other changes will be 
indicated as they are made. 



128 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

though the earliest combination was mam-mam, used in cry- 
ing. At five months '' he dropped the throat-sounds almost 
entirely, and began the shrill enunciation of vowels ; " and 
at six months he lowered his voice and began to use lip- 
sounds, simultaneously with the cutting of his first teeth. 
In another case, m appeared as the first consonant in the 
second month and was followed by h-d-n-r, occasionally g and 
li, and very rarely k ; the first syllables were pa-ma-ta-na. 
Lobische observed the consonants in this order : m-{w)-'b-p-d-t- 
l-n-s-r ; Sigismund in this: h-m-n-d-s-g-w-f-cli-k-l-r-scJi; and Dr. 
Brown in this : b-p-f-r-m-g-k-h-t-d-l-n ("\ In some cases nearly 
all syllables have been correctly pronounced during the first 
half-year ; while in others progress is much slower, very few 
syllables being certainly mastered before the ninth month. 

We may sometimes observe here also the beginnings of 
vocal imitation. The boy A. was observed to "watch 
attentively the lip-movements of his attendants ; " and other 
observers have remarked, from about the fourth month, " a 
curious mimicry of conversation, imitating especially the 
cadences, so that persons in the adjoining room would think 
conversation was going on." The same thing was ob- 

served in A. a little later. 

Secoxd Six Months. — Most children make a very 
marked advance during this period in the imitation of 
sounds, in the intentional use of sounds with a meaning, 
and in the comprehension of the meanings of words and 
gestures. The actual vocabulary of most children at this 
age is, however, exceedingly small. Many children, a year 
old, cannot speak a single word, while the average vocabu- 
lary does not probably exceed half a dozen words. 

A new advance accompanies the rise of active hearing, 
and the increasing power of attention in the third three 
months. The child begins to keep a sort of time to music, 



LANGUAGE. 129 

in which he shows pleasure, and this strong excitement 
stimulates the production of new sounds. He delights in 
being carried about with a galloping rhythmic motion, and 
will smack his lips and make other sounds in imitation of 
chirping to a horse. He pats his hands together in 

imitation of the accompanying motions in a nursery rhyme, 
and sometimes makes an attempt to say the words also. 
He shows a fondness for ringing the changes on certain 
syllables which he has learned, varying and reduplicating : 
e.g., mama, baba, gaga, nana, etc., and other less intelligible 
combinations. 

He understands many words which he cannot pronounce, 
and he pronounces some in a mechanical way without un- 
derstanding. He knows each member of the household by 
name, and will reach a biscuit to the person named to him. 
He knows the principal parts of his own body, and will 
])oint to them when asked. The words p«|9a and 

mama, whose surprising universality may be partly ac- 
counted for by the physiological law^ of ease (the sound 
most easily produced and, therefore, earliest used, being 
naturally associated with those persons whose presence 
arouses the earliest and most vivid emotions and ideas), are 
by many children at this time intelligently used, though 
some are later in this. 

Imitation usually makes rapid strides in this period. 
In one case gestures were imitated at eight months, and 
words at nine. If some one is being called, the child also 
calls loudly. In finother case, towards the end of the child's 
first year, he began to imitate the sounds made by animals 
and inanimate objects. Sigismund observed the instinct 

of imitation showing itself in the third quarter of the first 
year ; the reduplication of syllables composed of a labial or 
dental consonant and the vowel a ; and the more frequent 
occurrence of syllables in which the vowel is initial. 



130 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

Cliampiieys' child distinctly imitated the intonation of the 
voice when any word or sentence was repeated to him 
several times. This has been observed also in other 
cases. 

Children who are able to use a few words at this age, 
show by their use of them how inadequately defined is 
their meaning. A little girl, who had learned to say d gd 
(all gone) and gd gd (gegangen), applied the latter term to 
herself when falling down. Humphreys says the child 

he observed was able, at this time, to name many things 
correctly, and to pronounce all initial consonants distinctly, 
except tJi, t, d, v, and l. Some final consonants were indis- 
tinct. Another child, at eleven months, knew what guten 
tag meant, and responded with tata; he also answered adieu 
with adaa. In this case, the first association of a sound 
with a concept was ee, which meant ivet. A boy of ten 

months used intelligently the words mama, Aggie {Maggie, 
this afterwards became Waggie) and addie {auntie). At 
eleven months, Waggie was shortened to Wag, and addie to 
att. Another at seven months used to wave his hand 

and say tata at parting ; and one day he did this when a 
closet door was opened and shut again. Taine's little 

girl at twelve months, on learning the word hehe, as con- 
nected with the picture of the infant Jesus, afterwards 
extended it, curiously enough, not to all babies, but to all 
pictures. Occasionally a word is invented, such as the word 
mum, reported by Mr. Darwin, which the child used with 
an interrogatory sound when asking for food, but also " as a 
substantive of wide signification." I observed a similar 
general use- of da, in the case of F. In another case, the 
word ho was used to signify anything that pleased the child. 
The words mama, papa and hahe, which had been used for 
some time mechanically, were dropped about the middle of 
this period, to be resumed five months later, '' when they 



LANGUAGE. 131 

were applied to their proper objects." Sully observed 

in the beginning of this period (which he calls the la la 
period) the rise of spontaneous articulation. Combinations 
of S3dlables were suddenly hit upon, and repeated without 
any meaning, except as indications of baby feeling. Long 
a indicated surprise, and " a kind of o, formed by sucking 
in the breath, indicated pleasure at some new object." In 
one case, a little sentence — which reallj^ consisted of two 
words — was uttered by a child at the close of this period. 

He said : " Papa mama,^^ which meant : ^' Papa, take 

me to mama." 

The wide differences among children make it unsafe to 
venture any generalizations, except one, viz., this second 
half-year seems to be par excellence the period of the rise 
of imitation. Some children, however, are as far advanced 
at the beginning of this period as others are at its end. 
Perhaps it ought also to be remarked that the child who 
shows a great precocity in imitation, or in learning to 
speak, will not necessarily, on that account, turn out a 
more intelligent child. Imitation does not require a very 
high degree of mental acuteness, and the child who has 
been slow in this may in the end surpass his more preco- 
cious companion. 

Third Six Months. — While the child is learning to 
walk, there is very often a standstill, or even a retrograde 
movement in the matter of speech. After walking is mas- 
tered, the acquisition of language goes forward again with 
greater facility than ever. 

During this third period, marked progress is usually 
made in the understanding of words, and in their intelli- 
gent application, though the vocabulary is still very limited, 
and the pronunciation imperfect. Difficult sounds are 
omitted, or replaced by easier ones. Sometimes the change 



132 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

in one consonant has an influence on another which pre- 
cedes or follows it. In longer words and combinations, 
only the prominent part — the accented syllable, or the 
final sound — is reproduced. A final ie is often added to 
words. The child says dinnie for dinner, ninnie for drink, 
and heddy for bread. Other imperfect pronunciations are : 
apy tee {apple tree), p)iccy book {picture book), gamy or 
7iannie {grandma) , pee {])lease), pepe {pencil) , rno-a {more), 
ho ov 7id {horse), Bcdbert {Gilbert), Tot {Top/}, Ka-ka {Car- 
rie), and Kakie {Katy). 

Most children at this age understand a great deal of 
what is said to them. Such phrases as " bring the ball ; " 
" come on papa's knee ; " " go down ; " ^' come here ; " " give 
me a kiss," are perfectly understood and obeyed. Parts of 
the child's body, as eyes, nose, ear, other ear, hand, etc., other 
person's eyes, ears, etc., are pointed to when named. Arti- 
cles are fetched, carried and put where one commands. 

Some children begin, towards the end of this period, to 
express themselves in short sentences, which are usually 
elliptical, or, as Romanes says, " sentence-words," only the 
most prominent word or words in the sentence being pro- 
nounced. E.g., ta {thank you), nee {take me on your knee) ; 
det off; det up; where cows George? {where are Uncle George'' s 
cows?); mo-a, mama {give me more, mama) ; dao {take 

me down from my chair). Many combinations of words 

are made, Avhich fall short of the dignity of sentences. 
E.g., mama dess, ding-a-ling, etc. A boy of eighteen months 
"knows the last words of many of Mother Goose melodies, 
as moon ; place ; bare, bcire, bare ; patting them in at 
the right time, enthusiastically." 

Some words are invented by the child. E.g., the word 
tern, which Taine's little girl spontaneously used as a sort 
of general demonstrative, ^'a sympathetic articulation, that 
she herself has found in harmony with all fixed and distinct 



LANGUAGE. 133 

intention, and wMch. consequently is associated with her 
principal fixed and distinct intentions, which at present are 
desires to take, to have, to make others take, to look, to 
make others look." The same child invented the word ham 
to signify "something to eat/' just as Darwin's boy used 
mum for the same purpose. 

The love of reduplication shows itself very distinctly now, 
as indeed it has almost from the beginning ; no doubt for 
the physiological reason that it is easier for the vocal organs 
to execute a movement over again, to which they are ad- 
justed, and which they have performed once, than to adjust 
themselves to a new movement. Very probably the love of 
repetition and "jingle" which is so noticeable in children 
(and which, as Sigismund says, lies at the foundation of 
rhyme), also enters as a factor here. Numerous examples 
of the onomatopoetic naming of animals and things may 
also be observed at this time, though many of these are, no 
doubt, imitated from grown-up people. One or both of 
these tendencies may be observed in such expressions as 
the following : dada, mama, papa, icawa (icater) , wall wall 
or oua oua or bow ivow (dog), es es (yes), ni ni {nice), ko ko 
{cliicken) , pvff {idnd) , quack quack (duck),goHoh or lululu 
(all rolling objects), bopoo (bottle), too too (cars), tiippa tuppa 
tee (potato), etc. The child imitates (often spontaneously) 
the sounds made by the dog, cat, sheep, ticking of clock, 
etc., while many sounds are reduplicated. The opposite 
process, a spontaneous curtailing of certain words, may be 
sometimes noticed. In one case a boy of fifteen months 
contracted pcvpa, mama and addie into pa, ma and att respec- 
tively, having never heard any of these latter words. 

Imitation is now very strong. The child attempts to re- 
peat everything he hears ; but some sounds give him diffi- 
culty, and the shifts to which he resorts in such cases are of 
very great interest. The boy E. used to say nana for thank 



134 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

you, and dit taut for get caught (in play) ; but the phrase 
excuse me was too much for him ; he therefore used oho in 
its place, with a rising inflection on the second syllable. 
Singing is often imitated better than speech. A boy of 
fourteen months "gave back a little song, in the right 
key ; " and another, in the sixteenth month, knew some 
simple little hymns. 

But perhaps the most interesting thing of all at this time 
is the gradual " clearing " of the childish concepts, as indi- 
cated by the steady circumscription of the application of 
names. Even yet, however, names are applied much too 
widely ; much more experience is necessary before they ac- 
quire, in the young mind, a clear and definite connotation. 
(Even in mature life, most of our concepts are still very 
hazy and ill-defined ; and it might be allowable to describe 
the whole process of intellectual education as a process of 
clarification of the concept.) It is interesting, also, to note 
how the principle of association enters as a factor in the 
determination of the application of the name. When a 
child calls the moon a lamp, or applies his word hd (ball) to 
oranges, bubbles, and other round objects ; calls everything 
bow wow which bears any sort of resemblance to a dog (in- 
cluding the bronze dogs on the staircase, and the goat in the 
yard) ; applies his words po^^a and mama to all men and all 
women respectively ; makes his word cutie do duty, not only 
for knife, but also for scissors, shears^ sickle, etc.; says 
bd (bath) on seeing a crust dipped in tea; applies ati 
(assis) to chair, footstool, bench, sitting doivn, sit down, etc. ; 
peudu (perdu) or atta (gone or lost) to all sorts of dis- 
appearances ; — it is evident that one great striking resem- 
blance has overshadowed all differences in the objects. 
Another child, who had learned the word ot as a name for 
objects that were too warm, extended it to include, also, 
objects that were too cold (association by contrast). Later, 



LANGUAGE. 135 

on looking at a picture, lie pointed to the representation of 
clouds and said 6t. The clouds reminded him, no doubt, of 
the steam from the tea-kettle. This aptitude for seiz- 

ing analogies, which Taine believes to be the source of gen- 
eral ideas and of language, has numerous illustrations, not 
only in the language of the child just learning to speak, but 
also in the use of words by uncivilized or semi-civilized 
peoples.^ 

Fourth Six Months. — During the latter half of the 
second year linguistic progress is usually so rapid as to render 
a detailed account impossible. We can only call attention, 
with examples, to some of the most striking features. 

"By the end of the second year," says Schultze, '-the 
normal child can make himself understood in a short sen- 
tence." His own child was able, at nineteen months, to use 
sentences containing subject, predicate and object. In an- 
other case, quite a complicated sentence (but very elliptical, 
only the nouns being uttered), was heard in the twentieth 
month. In the case of A., a genuine sorrow was the occa- 
sion of his first sentence. His father, of whom he was very 
fond, had been playing with him for some time, and finally, 
being called away, put him down and went out, closing the 
door behind him. The child gazed for a moment at the 
closed door, and then, throwing himself on the floor, cried 
out, / n^ant my papa. Before this he used to express himself 
chiefly in elliptical sentences and sentence-words. When 
slightly over two years of age, he used to weave little stories 
of his own ; e.g., mama fd tcite downy toppy liouf. One day, 
while the dinner was waiting for his father, who was ex- 
pected home on the train, the child said : Toot-toot corny 
wite up tair, inny doh, uppy tdpool; toot-toot make big noise. 

^ See Romanes' " Mental Evolution in Man," Chap. YIII, 



136 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

Another of his sentences was : Take a badie hldy to; badie 
tiehd,feepy. The boy C. uttered his first sentence in the 
twenty-first month: Pees mama. Two months earlier he 
had used sentence-words ; e.g., papa cacker {papa has fire- 
crackers) . In the twenty-fourth month he told quite an ex- 
tensive story, in which the verbs were not expressed. Even 
compound sentences, and sentences containing subordinate 
clauses, are often mastered before the close of this period. 
Sometimes verbal inflections appear ; e.g., naughty baby kllde 
{cried). Another day the same child said corned for came, 

thus unconsciously rebuking the inconsistent English lan- 
guage. Interrogative sentences appeared in another case; 
e.g., ivhere^s pussy ? and negation was expressed by an af- 
firmative sentence, with an emphatic 710 tacked on at the 
end, exactly as the deaf-mutes do. Many of these primitive 
sentences are in the imperative mood, and many are still 
''sentence-words." Most children talk a great deal, and 
gesticulate profusely, at this time. Their expressions are 
concrete, and abstract words are avoided as far as possible. 
A little boy, on seeing the picture of a half-grown lad, spoke 
of it as a little baby man. Anything that has rhyme or 

rhythm is most easily picked up. A little nephew of my 
own was able, at this age, to sing a large number of little 
songs and hymns, giving the melody quite correctly. An- 
other boy, at twenty-one months, on hearing the milkman's 
bell in the morning, used to say : Mik man mik cow, crump 
horn, toss dog, kiss maid all florn; or peeping through the 
fence at the cows, Avould sing : Moo cow, moo cow, how-de- 
do cow. 

The child's progress is marked here by his gradual mas- 
tery of the personal and possessive pronouns. These are 
peculiarly difficult for the average child, and, according to 
Egger, are not usually attained until near the close of the 
second vear ; according to others, much later still (thirtieth 



LANGUAGE. 137 

month, according to Lindner). Previous to mastering the 
/, the child calls himself by his proper name, or by the 
name hahy^ as he may have been taught. When / first ap- 
pears, it is frequently employed, — quite consistently from 
the child's point of view, — not in the first person, but in 
the second ; i.e., he calls others / and himself you. One 
child used the word I correctly as early as the nineteenth 
month, but often exchanged it for her proper name. 
Another, in the twentieth month, still called himself by 
his proper name, but, a month later, said me for the first 
time. Another spoke of me as a personality in her twenty- 
second month. Another, at two years, often used the 
word m?/, meaning 2/o«r; e.g., Let me get u}) on my lap. 
Another, at the same age, still speaks of himself as baby in 
ordinary converse, but in great desire says, / want it, and in 
great fear says, I afraid. 

In some cases, almost all the sounds are mastered by the 
end of the second year, but from the observations at hand, 
this may be considered the exception. Most children still 
have difficulty with certain sounds. Some of these diffi- 
culties are seen in the following: ajwo {apple), zhatis {there 
it is), es {yes), yleg {egg; note difficulty with initial vowel), 
oken {open), task {mustache), sh^ad {thread), dam {gum), 
fdl {shawl), uppervator {elevator), nobella {umbrella), banni- 
cars {banisters), aw yi {all right), setto {cellar), pato {potato), 
it da {sit there). One observer reports a special difficulty 
with s, z, d, g,' k, I, n, g, r and t. Another says that at 
nineteen months, the sounds s, sh, ch and j were generally 
indistinct ; while w, v and / were formed, but not well de- 
veloped. On the other hand nasal g a^^peared, o was mas- 
tered, I, p and t 2,^ final consonants began to be used, and Ti 
became a favorite sound, used in many words. Sibilants 
were more at command when final than when initial, while 
short a was just beginning to be formed. In the twenty- 



138 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

second month the sounds of cli, j and th were still imperfect, 
the hard sound of th being replaced by s and the soft sound 
by z. A month later, r was still generally replaced by I; 
when s came before another consonant, one or the other 
was dropped, and k was sometimes confused with p or t. 
In another case, the double consonant sp made its first ap- 
pearance at the end of the second year. 

There are still many examples of the inadequate limi- 
tation of the concept. In one case the word poor, which 
was learned as an expression of pity, Avas applied on occa- 
sion of any sort of loss or damage whatsoever, and was even 
used in speaking of a crooked pin. Dam (gum), with which 
toys were mended, became a universal remedy for all things 
broken or disabled ; and afterwards, when the child ac- 
quired the word sh^ad {thread), broken things were divided 
into two classes, viz., those that were to be mended with 
dam, and those that were to be mended with sh'ad. 
Behivys, in another case, was at first the name for all small 
fruits, but afterwards became restricted, yielding a portion 
of its territory to gape (grape). Another little boy ex- 

tended his word gee-gee (horse) to a drawing of an ostrich, 
and a bronze figure of a stork ; and his word apoo (apple) 
to a patch of reddish-brown color on the mantelpiece. 
The boy C. applied the word hoke (broke) to a torn pocket- 
handkerchief ; and R. extended his word do (door) to 
everything that stopped uj) an opening or prevented an 
exit, including the cork of a bottle, and the little table that 
fastened him in his high chair. 

Healthy children of two years of age will usually attempt 
all sorts of sounds in imitation of others, and will practice 
on new and difficult combinations with great perseverance, 
sometimes carrying the word through several stages of 
transition, until it finally assumes the perfect form. The 
bov A. first heard the word pass?/ when seventeen months 



LANGUAGE. 139 

old; lie at on^e undertook to say it, but called it at first 
pooheh, then poojle, t\\Qi\ poopoohle, t\\en poofee, until finally, 
after much persevering practice, lie was able to ssiy pussy, 
when he seemed to be satisfied, and discontinued its use, 
except when pussy was in sight. Schultze gives, among 
others, the following examples : The German word wasser 
passed through these stages, — loawaff — fitfaff — icaff/cajf 
— icasse — ivasser; the word grosmama was first omama, 
and then dosmama, before assuming its final form. The 
strength of the reduplicating tendency, and the influence of 
the initial consonant on the remainder of the word, is seen 
in the following imitations: ivawa (Mary), duclu (Jidia), 
ih ill {little), ha ha (hlanket), fafa (faster), mama {master)^ 
papa {pasture), nana {naughty)} 

' I cannot forbear quoting the following from Sigismund in this con- 
nection. A child of twenty-one months attempted to repeat, line by- 
line, a piece of poetry after another person. The first line in each 
pair represents the pronunciation of the adult, the second the imitation 
of the child : 

Outer Mond, du gehst so stille, 

Tute Bohnd, du tehz so tinne. 

Durch die Abend wolken hin, 
Duch die Aten-honten in. 

Gehst so traurig, und ich fiihle, 
Tehz so tautech, und ich biiue. 
Dass ich ohne Kuhe bin, 
Dass ich one Ule bin. 

Guter Mond, du darfst es wissen, 
Tute Bohnd, du atz es bitten. 

Weil du so verschwiegen bist, 
Bein do so bieten bitz. 

Warum meine Thranen fliessen, 
Amum meine Tauen bieten. 
Und mein Herz so traurig ist, 
Und mein Aetz so atich iz. 



140 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

Vocabularies. — I have taken the trouble to collect, for 
purposes of comparison, a number of vocabularies of children, 
which have been recorded by careful and competent observ- 
ers, with as much completeness and accuracy as possible. 
I will now give these in summarized form, so as to show 
the relative frequency of the various sounds as initial, and 
also the relative frequency of the various parts of speech. 
In order the more accurately to show the sounds actually 
made by the child, I have been obliged to use an alphabet 
differing somewhat from the ordinary English alphabet. 
The following changes are made : c is dropped out alto- 
gether, such words as corner, candy, etc., being classed under 
7c ; words like centre, cigar, etc., under s ; and words like 
chain, cheese, chair, etc., forming a new series under ch. 
Words like George, gentleman, etc., are classed under j 
instead of g ; words like Philip under /; words like knife, 
knee, etc., under n ; and words like wrap, lurite, etc., under 
r. Other new letters besides ch are sh and th. In short, 
it is sought to classify the child's words according to his 
pronunciation, and not according to the English alphabet. 
If he says tdtie for potato, the word is classed under t. I 
am convinced that this is the only way to obtain reliable 
and valuable results. 

I. A child of nine months is reported as speaking " nine 
words plainly." The words are not given. 

II. A boy at twelve months has "four words of his 
own." 

III. A child of twelve months uses ten words with mean- 
ing. Six of these are nouns, two adjectives and two 
verbs. The initial sounds are m (three times), p (four 
times), n, a and k (each once). 

IV. A child of one year used eight words, seven of which 
were nouns, and one an adverb. The initial sounds are h 
(four times), m, p, d and u (one each). 



LANGUAGE. 141 

V. The boy E,. had at command about twenty words, 
thirteen of which were nouns, and four or five interjectional 
words. For initial sound b was perferred, thenp and t. 

VI. Another child is reported, at fifteen months, as hav- 
ing '' syllables, but no words." 

VII. A girl of seventeen months is reported as using 
thirty-five words, twenty -two of which are nouns, four 
verbs, two adjectives, four adverbs and three interjections. 
The initial sounds are d (eight times), s (four), m, b 
and ch (three each), 2>, t, ^, « aiid y (two each), i, j, n, o 
(one each). 

YIII. A girl of twenty-two months uses twenty-eight 
words, distributed as follows : Xouns sixteen, verbs three, 
adjectives three, adverbs and interjections five. The initial 
sounds are b (six times), d (five), m (four), j9 (three), g, h 
and k (two each), e, i, n and o (one each). 

IX. A girl at two years employs thirty-six words, dis- 
tributed as follows: Nouns sixteen, adjectives four, pro- 
nouns three, verbs seven, adverbs three, interjections three. 
Initial sounds are, p (five times), 7?i, b and lo (each four 
times), g, k and h (each three times), d, i, n and r (each 
twice), a and o (each once). 



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•Cuoo 1 1 


■d^^d 1 


T-i (N 




CO 


•APV 1 


rH ^ ^ ^ 


-^ 


o 


-qiBA 1 "^ 


CO (M r-l COr-l CO i-i JQ CO 


rH 


g 


•nojs. 1 


^ rH 


rH 


CO 


•fPV i -^ 


(M r-i r-i (Mt-( r-( i-H i-l (N 


(M 




•sunox: 


"»^-*CCCOO>COOi!MCCgOlOa5t-<N^(Nt-iOCO» 


"Jt 


g 




<|;q'3QWE^OKi-HH^WH:jS;ziOiiHaP^a2^HHt3!>^si 


c 
H 


•i^ioxjS;?^ 


-tt-icowoc^o cico:oco cotj^cooo c^t-iOr-i 

C^l ^ —I r-l c-, ^ ^ ^, (M tH cm 


i 


•[J9JUI 1 '^ 


r-ir-l 




CO 


•fnool 1 II 


•d8JJ 1 


^" (N ^ 




.o 


•APV 1 -^ 


(M T-i (M C^l rl ^ 


'^ 


;^ 


•qj8A 1 •* 


:Ci-H-,OC^1i-l <N (MiHiHCO iHt- lO 


Tji 


^ 


•UOJJ 1 


(M tH 




CO 


•Cpv 1 "^' 


<M(M rlS<Jr-l (M r-iTH CO CO CO 


(NrH 


.^: 


•sanox i "^ S "^ 


'+COw . t-Or-KMCI lO^Cri-O (M-^icOO t-CO 
^ rH(M,-irHi-lr-i i-( 


^1 




'<MSftKfe;^W„H~ts^^-g;z;OCiHaP5 3:^cHHt:)>^s: 


i 


•l^;ox 


^c.x 


^ C^l C^l CO ■* T-( ?T^ T* O •* rt- C^l -r X 


^ 


rH 


•Caajui 1 '*'- 


^ rH rHr^ ^ 


C5 


S 


•[uo3 1 


1 


•d9ad 1 




•APV 1 


(N ,-1 


'-^ 


- 


•qaaA 1 ^ 


tH ^ CO ^ t, c<l 


c-1 


?3 


•uoj^ 1 


r-t 




- 


•CpV 1 - 


iH iH rH 1-1 


^ 


cc 


•SnnO^ j-HICt-t-C^KMCOT-lrHN^TUXCO eqrH t- IQ 


lO 


^t 




<lwSQWfeOMHHHsfciiH:i§!2;OaHap5aQ^=HH;:3>^S) 


1 


•T«^ox|^?i"' 


rHO^^tiOXlO^CJC^^COl-t-CiT^-.^Tj-L^O'^ 


<M CO 


?2 


•Cjaani 1 '-' 


,H rH 




CO 


•Mol 1 II 


•d8JJ 1 


rH rH <M 




^ 


•APV 1 ^ 


^ rHrH rH 


rnrH 


" i 


•qjGAJ -^^ 


(MrHlMCCtCrH JO rH CO TflOr^-*rH 


^ 


g 


•no J J 1 


rH CO rH 


C 


^ 


•fpvr^^ 


rH rHrHTi^ CO ,_, ^ ^ ^ rH C^ rH 


T-t 


i^ 


•simo^ 


^^'-'^ 


t-T-HOt-XlMrH-trHC: -^^riCrHlOt-COCOClrH 
T-* O^ rH rH rH 


o 


1 




<;pqoQWfeOWwH^^WjS:2;Oa.G'Piia3^HHt2t>^Sl 


-3 
1 



143 






be 

p a 



« o 









>-S)1 



Mis 



•I^^ox 1 


OO^rH^TH C0^00TH(MOgQ»a»0»q »Ci«Q0Oi-ItJ*,h^(M 1 


1 


•[JBJUI 1 ^ rH 1 


(N 


•CaoQ 1 c^ ^ 1 


CO 


•dajj |<^»-^ -^ ^^ ^^^^1 


(M 


'APV 1^'-''^'-' COr-lTH -^CCr-) tHC^tHt-KM | 


CO 


■QJQA 1"^*^ 0(M r-tt-rHTHi-(iO<Nr-lTt(CO <^2^2 °^ 1 


.QOjj- 1 ICCN CO<M ^rH(M(N| 


oo 


• Cp V |"*f0;O THrHTH (NCOtH rHOi lOi-l rM 1 




*suno^ 


(N'^rHCOrH (MOrHrHrHlO»0?OC^4 (MCO'*C1 rH CO 
rH rH rH rH rH (M rH 


1 




-alpqgQWfL,OSHH»-jtsih4S;2;Ofi.ap^ai^HHt2>^N 


1^ 

1 


•Ii3;ox 


rHrHt^lOt-rHlOrHOTtlt^'+l'tlC''J:C10r-lOOXir^C^T-<*rHCC'* 
S^JH^OlO^rHCO^rilcvIrH CO CllO C-5rH rH 




•Caauq 1 ^'^ ^ ^ ^ 1 


t- 


•Caoo 1 -^ 1 


rH 


•dajjl ^ r^ ^ ^^ ^ 1 


CO 


•APV 1'^'-''-' '-' "^1<^ (M(MiHrH(MiM| 


a 


•q.ia A \ ^"^ t-i-i-0'*t-^ cocciOT-iiHru ooGOiHrhs^ »o 1 


^ 


•uoj^ 1 T*^ ^1 CO ^ ^ cq 1 


CO 


• CPV 1^'^'^ rHiHiHi-IC^ (M r-CrHiHr-l C^IC i-<C^ rH 1 


^ 


•snno^ 


^OO^.CO.CCOb.^C^^t;;=OOC;r,OrHOjC^-t;^^^l-t^ 


i 




<tJMoQWfeOKKH^t£^hqg;z;OflHCP5co^HHt:3;>^Sl 


'ci 


•I^^ox 


O »0 (M X rH t^ lO (M Oi rH JO O •* fC UO (M rH I- 1- ^ rH ,-1 IC CO CO CO 
rH:^rHCOrH(>)THCO rHlOCOCOtMrHiO C1t-rH<*rH -* 


5 


•Cja^ui 1 '""■' '"""' 


T* 


•Cnoo 1 ^ 


CI 


•ClaJd i "^ '^ <M <N (M rH rH 


?5 


"ADV 1*^ '"' '"' ''^ '"' (NrJi(MT-l rH rHrHrHrHiM 


1 CirHOrHTt^Cq-O THrHl--^01 -t^ T-tOTtHlHC<l(M >* 


1 


•nOJjl ^C^ rH CKT^ 


a. 
8 


• Cp V l'^^'^ COi-lrH<MC<l rHlf3T*^(M-^'*rH TfHCO rJ^lO O 


•suno^ 


-^;:^5^=-'SSS'-'^*-?5?S^;5'^J? SJgS^^-^^S^ 


1 




<JMQQWfeOWhH^^Wh:;S^O(i.ap5c»^HHt)>'^N 


1 


•l^^ox 


0»0 XrHOt-MlO lOt-rHOyjJCrH CO O rH C<lrH 


s 


•[.ia!;ni | '-' 


T-i 


•Caoo 1 ^ 


^ 


•cla.ij[ 1 ^ 


^ 


•APV 1 ^^ rH 01 CO rH 


o 


"qj8\ 1 (M rHT-l(M C<J -^(MrH C^KM rH C^l lO 


^ 


•UOJd[ 1 '-' ^ 


(N 


•[PV 1*^^ COrHCqC^rHCO rH rH 


CO 


suno^ 


'tCO t- TjiCOCOrH TH-:tlC:t^rHiMrH '^l -t^' ^OrH 


CO 




^pqgQWPMC^WHHH^^HjS;210fuG'P5c«^HH!:2t>^S) 


3 



144 



LANGUAGE. 145 

Summarizing these vocabularies, we find some interesting 
facts bearing on language-growth, both on the physiological 
and on the psychological side. 

For example, with regard to the relative frequency of the 
various parts of speech, the following table is instructive. 
Of the five thousand four hundred words comprising these 
vocabularies ^ 



60 per 


cent 


are nouns. 


20 '' 


(( 


" verbs. 


9 " 


a 


" adjectives. 


5 '' 


a 


*' adverbs. 


2 " 


u 


" pronouns. 


2 " 


iC 


" prepositions. 


1.7 -' 


u 


" interjections. 


0.3 " 


a 


'' conjunctions. 



100.0 

Of the nouns, less than one per cent are abstract. Nearly 
all are names of persons or familiar objects. The majority, 
in the earlier months, seem to be used almost with the 
force of x^roper nouns, as Schultheiss has also observed. The 
adjectives are mostly those of size, temperature, cleanliness 
and its opposite, and similar familiar notions. This table 
also corroborates Sigismund's observation that the conjunc- 
tion is es]3ecially difiicult. Another interesting point is the 
comparison of the above table with a similar table, showing 
the relative frequency of the various parts of speech in 
ordinary adult language. Professor Kirkpatrick says that 
of the words in the English language, 

1 In all the calculations that follow, I have taken the liberty to 
include-, along with my own vocabularies, those of Professor Holden, 
and Professor Humphreys, which I have re-arranged phonetically for 
the purpose. 



146 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

60 per cent are nouns. 
11 " " " verbs. 
22 " " " adjectives. 
5.5 " " " adverbs. 

An important consideration is involved here. If we look 
only at the first of these two tables, and consider the 
child's words by themselves, it will seem that the nouns 
have greatly the advantage over the other parts of speech. 
But such a conclusion obviously cannot be drawn, unless a 
comparison of the child's vocabulary with that of the adult 
justifies us in so doing. In order to show that the child 
learns nouns more easily than verbs, we must be able to 
show that the number of his nouns bears a larger propor- 
tion to the number of nouns he will use as an adult, than 
the number of his verbs bears to the number of verbs he 
will use in adult life. To represent the matter symboli- 
cally, 

Let n = the proportion of nouns in the child's vocabulary. 

And N = " " " " " " man's " 

Let V = " '' " verbs " " child's " 

And V = " " " " " " man's " 

Then, if the child learns nouns more easily than verbs, 
the proportion of n to N will be greater than that of v to V. 
But on comparing the two tables, the very opposite is 
found to be the case. 

For il=^=l 



N 60 
j^^20 
V 11 



But4 = ?5 = i.81 



In other words, the child of two years has made nearly 
twice as much progress in learning to use verbs as in learn- 



LANGUAGE. 147 

ing to use nouns ; according to my tables of child-language 
and Professor Kirkpatrick's table of adult-language.^ A 
comparison of the adjectives and adverbs in the two tables 
justifies a similar conclusion in favor of the adverb. To 
my mind, this fact — which, so far as I know, has been 
hitherto overlooked by all writers on child-language — pos- 
sesses great value for philology and pedagogy as well as for 
psychology. In the first place it supports the view that 
the acquisition of language in the individual and in the race 
proceeds by similar stages and along similar lines. Max 
Miiller says that the primitive Sanscrit roots of the Indo- 
Germanic languages all represent actions and not objects ; 
that in the race the earliest ideas to assume such strength 
and vividness as to break out beyond the limits of gesture 
and clothe themselves in words are ideas of movement, 
activity. We have found, from examination of the vocabu- 
laries of these twenty-five children, that the ideas which 
are of greatest importance in the infant mind, and so clothe 
themselves most frequently (relatively), in words, are the 
ideas of actions and not objects, of doing instead of being. 
The child learns to use action-icorcls (verbs) more readily 
than object-ivords (nouns) ; and words descriptive of actions 
(adverbs) more readily than words descriptive of objects 
(adjectives).^ 



1 This statement is still further confirmed by a vocabulary received 
since the publication of the first edition. It is the vocabulary of a five- 
year-old boy in Minneapolis. Of the sixteen hundred words spoken 
by this boy, 19 per cent were verbs and only 53 per cent nouns. 

2 Professor Kirkpatrick, in a private note, suggests that, since his 
tables of adult language are taken from the dictionary, they very likely 
do not represent truly the vocabulary of the average adult. It appears 
that, in " Robinson Crusoe," the proportion of nouns to verbs is not 
60 to 11, but 45 to 24. If " Robinson Crusoe " represents the average 
adult vocabularv, thru the conclusions stated in the text will need 



148 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

In the second place this fact confirms the Froebelian 
principle, on which child-education is coming more and 
more to be based, viz., that education proceeds most naturally 
(and, therefore, most easily and rapidly) along the line of 
motor activity.^ The child should not be so much the 
receptacle of instruction, as the agent of investigation. Let 
him do things, and by doing he will most readily learn. He 
should not \)q passive, but active in his own education. The 
kindergarten is the modern incarnation of this idea, but 
tlie idea itself is as old as Aristotle, who says, *' We learn 
an art by doing that which we wish to do when we have 
learned it; we become builders by building, and harpers 
by harping. And so by doing just acts we become just, 
and by doing acts of temperance and courage we become 
temperate and courageous." " 

Turning now to the consideration of these vocabularies 
from the standpoint of ease or difficulty of proyiunciation of 
the various simple sounds, we find some instructive data 
here also. The following table shows the relative frequency 
of the various sounds as initial. In this calculation no heed 
is paid to the English spelling of the words, but only to the 
sounds actually uttered by the child, as already pointed out. 
Of the five thousand four hundred words 



revision. I imagine, however, that in a book so full of action as 
" Robinson Crusoe," the verb element would be unusually strong. 

1 My colleague, Professor van der Smissen, gives me the very interest- 
ing observation, that his little girl, who is just learning to talk, uses 
many sentences in which the verbs are not spoken at all, but acted^ all 
the other words in the sentence being spoken. E.g., " Willie whipped 
the pussy," would be expressed by the words, "Willie . . . pussy," 
accompanied by a lively slapping movement of one hand upon the 
other. 

2 " Eth. Nic," Book. 11. Chap. I. par. 4. 









LANGUAGE. 






11 


per 


cent begin with the sound of b. 


10.3 


a 


(( 


ii 


ii 


li 




" S. 


9 


11 


ii 


li 


a 


ii 




'' A;. 


8 


(C 


(( 


a 


a 


11 




" p. 


6.1 


i( 


ii 


a 


a 


a 




" h. 


6 


a 


a 


a 


ii 


a 




" d. 


6 


a 


a 


ii 


11 


11 




" m. 


6 


(( 


a 


a 


u 


ii 




" t. 


5.2 


a 


a 


a 


a 


a 




'' w. 


4 


u 


a 


a 


a 


a 




"/. 


4 


a 


u 


a 


ii 


ii 




" n. 


3.2 


u 


a 


ii 


11 


ii 




" 9- 


3.1 


a 


u 


a 


ii 


a 




'' I 


3 


a 


a 


ii 


a 


11 




" a. 


3 


a 


a 


a 


ii 


11 




li ^, 


2 


a 


a 


li 


ii 


a 




" ^. 


2 


a 


i( 


ii 


a 


11 




'' sh. 


1.3 


iC 


u 


ii 


a 


11 




" th. 


1.2 


a 


a 


11 


a 


11 




" e. 


1.1 


a 


a 


a 


li 


a 




'' 0. 


1 


a 


ii, 


ii 


a 


a 




" ch. 


1 


a 


i( 


a 


ii 


ii 




" J- 


1 


u 


a 


a 


li 


a 




" y- 


0.8 


a 


li 


li 


a 


a 




" u. 


0.5 


a 


u 


li 


ii 


11 




'' V. 


0.2 


a 


a 


a 


a 


li 




" q- 



149 



A glance at this table shows how prominent a place the 
explosive consonants occupy as initial sounds in child-lan- 
guage.^ The vowels, on the contrary, though undoubtedly 

1 The vocabularj^ of the five-year-old MinneapoHs boy, spoken of in 
a previous footnote, conforms, m the main, to this order. The five 
sounds he used most frequently as initial are s, 2^1 &> fc, /", in the order 
named. 



150 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

the earliest sounds to be used in most cases, are very in- 
frequent as initial, not only absolutely but relatively. In 
the English dictionaries the vowel a occupies fourth place 
as initial letter ; in my tables it occupies fourteenth place ; 
while the other vowels stand still lower. The reason 
of this is not far to seek. It is simply a case of the 
operation of the law of physiological ease ; as any one may 
verify by pronouncing, in succession, the following syl- 
lables : a}), pa, ah, ha, ak, ka, am, ma, ad, da; and observing 
how much more easily those syllables are pronounced in 
Avhich the consonant leads and the vowel follows. 

Another interesting feature of this table is the high place 
occupied by the guttural k as initial sound. It stands 
above p and m, and next to s and h. This fact does not 
bear out the theory propounded by several writers on child- 
language, that those sounds are selected by the child for 
earliest acquirement Avhose pronunciation involves those 
portions of the vocal apparatus which are most easily seen, 
such as the lips. According to this theory, not only the 
labial p, but the sounds d, m, f, sh, th, etc., ought to stand 
high in the list, because the movements involved in their 
pronunciation are plainly visible; while the guttural k, 
whose movements are absolutely out of sight, should stand 
very low. The contrary is the case ; k stands third in the 
list of initial sounds, while th, whose movements are exceed- 
ingly obvious to sight, occupies the eighteenth place. This 
seems to prove that the child does not learn to utter sounds 
by watching the mouths of those who utter them in his 
presence; and this opinion is confirmed by the observation 
of Schultze, that the child does not usually look at the 
mouth, but at the eyes of the person speaking to him. On 
the other hand there seems no sufficient ground for the 
statement that the law of least effort is overturned by this 
frequency of the sound of k. This guttural sound is, for 



LANGUAGE. 161 

most children, no more difficult than the labials. Often it 
is one of the very earliest sounds employed. I know one 
child with whom it is more frequently used than even h. In 
short, so far as my observations go, I have no hesitation in 
saying that the child's earliest vocal utterances are not 
acquired by imitation at all, either of sound or of move- 
ment, but that they are purely impulsive in their character. 
They are simply the result of the overflow of motor energy, 
which we have seen so prominent in other departments of 
the child's life ; and they proceed at first along the lines of 
least resistance. 

In the following tables I have given the results of a care- 
ful examination of seven hundred instances of mispronun- 
ciation which I have found in the above vocabularies. The 
first table shows the various sounds in the order of the 
number of times thsy are misused, as well as the ways in 
which they are misused ; the second and third tables enter 
into more detail. 

In the following table the first column gives the sound 
misused; the second shows the number of times it is re- 
placed by another sound ; the third shows how often it is 
dropped, without being replaced; and the fourth shows 
how often it is brought into a word to which it does not 
belong (not as a substitute for some other sound, but as a 
pure interpolation, for no apparent reason). 



152 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 



Sound 
Misused. 


Re- 
placed. 


1 

Dropped. 


Inter- 
polated. 


Total. 


Sound 
Misused. 


Re- 
placed. 


Dropped. 


Inter- 
polated. 


Total. 


R 


51 


87 


4 


142 


w 


7 


5 


3 


15 


L 


35 


70 




105 


Ch 


13 






13 


S 


25 


34 


1 


60 


Y 


1 


10 


1 


12 


G 


25 


6 




31 


V 


8 


2 




10 


T 


13 


17 


1 


31 


E 


2 


5 




7 


Sh 


20 


4 




30 


H 


2 


5 




7 


K 


20 


8 




28 


J 


5 






5 


Th 


21 


2 




23 


P 


4 


1 




5 


(hard) 










A 




4 




4 


F 


15 


4 


1 


20 


M 


4 






4 


D 


5 


12 


2 


19 


Wh 


3 






3 


Th 


14 


4 




18 





3 






3 


(soft) 










B 


3 






3 


Ns 


15 






15 


Z 


1 


1 




2 


N 


7 


7 


1 


15 


Q 


1 






1 



The following table shows the relative frequency of 
replacement of the sounds when initial, medial, and final, 
and also (in the case of the consonants) when occurring 
as one member of a double consonant {e.g., as r in cream). 
It also gives the relative frequency of the substituted 
sounds : 



Sound 
Keplaced. 


When 
Initial. 


When 
Medial. 


When 
Final. 


When 
Double. 


Eeplaced 
by 


Times. 


Examples. 


R 


21 


21 


9 


4 


w 

1 

y 

e 

V 

t 
m 

1> 
k 


29 
6 
3 
8 


kweem (cream). 

tommolla (tomorrow). 

allyite (all right), 
tumblie (tumbler), 
voom (room), 
tautech (traurig). 

pipe (ripe). 
Kaka (Carrie). 



LANGUAGE. 



153 



Sound 
Eeplaced. 


When 
Initial. 


When 
Medial. 


When 
Final. 


When 
Double. 


Keplaced 


Times. 


Examples. 


L 


8 


8 


19 


3 


e 

w 

u 

n 

t 

b 

d 

00 


9 
7 
7 
4 
3 
2 
2 
1 


minnie (milk), 
table (table), 
singu (shingle), 
setta (celery), 
bampe (lampe). 
degen (legen). 
apoo (apple). 


Sh 


17 


2 


7 




s 
h 
b 
t 
n 


19 
4 
1 

1 
1 


fis (fish), 
hoogar (sugar) . 

tooz (shoes). 


S 


18 


4 


3 


6 


t 
h 
f 
b 
d 


8 
8 
3 
3 
3 


tweet * (sweet), 
hlate (slate), 
poof ee (pussy) . 

dide (side). 


G 


19 


5 


1 


4 

* 


d 

k 

t 

b 

w 

3 


17 

2 
2 
1 
1 
1 
1 

10 
4 
3 
1 
1 
1 
1 


dass (glass), 
hookoo (sugar), 
toss (gross), 
bavy (gravy), 
detting (getting). 


Th (hard) 


11 


3 


7 


5 


f 
t 
s 

I 

n 
r 

t 

s 

g 
d 


free (three), 
mous (mouth), 
tank (thank), 
harf (hearth), 
nuppin (nothing). 


K 


11 


7 


2 


7 


15 

2 
2 
1 


bastet (basket), 
sun (come), 
untie (uncle), 
tanny (candy) . 


F 


7 


4 


4 


2 


P 
s 
k 
t 


6 
5 
2 


nup (enough). 

buttersy (butterfly). 

kork (fork). 
6t (off). 



154 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 



Sound. 


When 
Initial. 


When 
Medial. 


When 
Final. 


When 
Double. 


Replaced 


Times. 


Examples. 


Ng 




5 


10 


1 


n 
e 
a 


12 

2 

1 


finner (finger) . 
tockies (stockings), 
lockatair (rocking chair). 


Th (sufL) 


11 


3 






d 
m 


13 
1 


altogedder (altogether) . 
dare (there) . 


T 






7 




e 
k 
w 

(T 

P 


6 
4 

1 
1 
1 


dockie (doctor), 
bankie (blanket). 
Jackie (jacket), 
coak (coat), 
wawer (water). 


Ch 


9 

• 


2 


2 


1 


S 
. t 

sh 


7 
4 

2 


sair (chair), 
tillens (children), 
shick (chick) . 


V 


1 


5 


2 




b 
f 
d 


5 

2 
1 


gib (give), 
shufer (shovel). 
Dadie (David). 


N 




1 


6 




c 

111 

1 


4 

2 
1 


buttie (button) . 
pirn (pin), 
lemolade (lemonade). 


W 


6 


1 






V 

1 


6 
1 


go vay (go away), 
lalla (water). 


D 


1 


4 






n 
t 
k 


2 

2 

1 


towntownt (down town), 
vinner (window), 
kankie (candy). 


J 


4 


1 






d 

g 


4 

1 


demidon (demijohn). 

Gekkie (Jessie). 


P 


o 




1 


1 


b 
t 


2 

2 


bee (please), 
patie (paper). 


M 


2 


2 






k 
n 
w 


2 
1 
1 


hankie (hammer). 
Waggie (Maggie). 


Wh 


3 








f 
h 


2 

1 


feel (wheel), 
haiah (where).. 



LANGUAGE. 



155 



Sound 
Replaced. 


When 
Initial. 


When 
Medial. 


When 
Final. 


When 
Double. 


Replaced 


Times. 


Examples. 









8 




a 

e 


2 


winna (window). 


B 


1 


2 






d 
m 




badie (baby). 
Milly (Billy). 


E 






2 




a 

00 




vera (very), 
cookoo (cookie) 


H 


1 


1 






t 
1 




torns (horns), 
la lo (la haut). 


Y 




1 






e 




bewo (bureau). 


Z 




1 






d 




Doderfeen (Josephine). 


Q 




1 






k 




skeeze (squeeze). 



The following table gives similar information with regard 
to the dropping of difficult sounds : 



Sound 
Dropped. 


When 
Initial. 


When 
Medial. 


When 
Final. 


When 
Double. 


Examples. 


R 


2 


61 


24 


50 


each (reach), 
apicot (apricot), 
dotta (daughter), 
baselet (bracelet) . 


L 


10 


37 


23 


39 


etta be (let me be), 
peeze (please), 
fa (fall), 
buttafy (butterfly). 


S 


27 


4 


3 


30 


poon (spoon) . 
Bottie (Boston), 
ga (gas), 
tabewie (strawberry). 



156 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 



Sound 
Dropped. 


When 
Initial. 


When 
Medial. 


When 
Final. 


When 
Double. 


Examples. 


T 




9 


8 


8 


dissance (distance), 
bonny (bonnet) . 
sottin (stocking). 


D 


1 


5 


G 


12 


sanny (sandy), 
gamma (grandma), 
bines (blinds) . 


Y 


6 


4 






ard (yard), 
panna (piano). 


K 


4 


2 


2 


2 


opf (kopf). 
basset (basket), 
boo (book). 


N 


1 




6 


1 


pi (pin), 
burr (burn) . 


G 


6 






1 


atten (garten). 


W 


5 








ont (want), 
oodn't (wouldn't). 


E 


3 




2 




nuff (enough), 
koff (coffee). 


H 


5 








eah (liere). 


Sh 


4 








litta (schlitten). 


F 




3 


1 


2 


satie pin (safety pin), 
natanoon (afternoon). 


Th (soft) 


3 


1 






at (that). 
ober air (over there). 


A 


4 








fade (afraid), 
nudda (another). 


Th (hard) 






2 




ba (bath), 
mao (mouth) . 


V 


1 




1 




ammum (warum). 
Duttie (Gustave). 


P 


1 








tatie (potato). 


Z 






1 




no (nose). 



LANGUAGE. 157 

• A word of caution is perhaps necessary here. These 
tables do not show accurately the order of difficulty of the 
various sounds, inasmuch as they indicate the misuse of the 
sounds, not relatively to the number of correct pronuncia- 
tions of each sound, but only relatively to the total number 
of mispronunciations. For example, in the first table q 
seems an easier sound than h, because it is only misused 
once, while h is misused three times. But if we remember 
that in the vocabularies h occurs fifty-five times as often as 
q, the case is entirely altered. Considered in this way, the 
order of difficulty, according to my observations, is approx- 
imately the following : ?-, Z, tli, v, sh, y, g, ch, s, j, e,f, t, n, q, 
d, k, 0,'ic, a, 7i, m, 77, b. The most difficult sound is r and 
the easiest b. 

It will be observed also that, according to these tables, 
mispronunciation is ver}^ frequent in the case of double con- 
sonants, and most frequent of all in tliose combinations 
which belong to what Mr. Pitman calls the pZ and pr series. 
Such words as cream, bracelet, and fly are almost alwa3'S 
mutilated ; sometimes r and I are replaced by iv or some 
other sound ; sometimes they are omitted altogether. 

Another thing to be observed is that the choice of a sub- 
stitute for a difficult sound is often determined by the prom- 
inent consonant in the preceding or succeeding syllable. 
This leads to a reduplication of the easier sound in prefer- 
ence to the use of the more difficult one. The child says 
cawhee for coffee, korJc for fork, or let lo for la haut. The 
number of these reduplications is very large, and the device 
is adopted also in the case of difficult vowels ; e.g., Deeclie 
occurs for Edie, and Dida for Ida. 

Another significant thing is the frequency with which the 
sound of e is used as a substitute for difficult sounds, both 
vowel and consonantal, especially at the end of a word. The 
child says ittie for little, finnie forflnger, and ninnie for drink. 



158 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

In addition to the mispronunciations tabulated above, I 
find a large number of miscellaneous mispronunciations 
difficult to classify, such as the following : medniss for 
medicine, Mangie fag for American flag, skoogie for excuse 
me, kidlie for tickle, pd-td-soo for patent leather shoes, etc. 

If we seek now to discover some principle underlying the 
development of child-speech from the psychic point of view, 
we shall find, I believe, that principle of transformation, 
which we have already observed so frequently elsewhere, 
operating in this sphere also. The earliest utterances of 
the new-born have little or no psychic significance. As 
expressions of his thought, they have none at all. But by 
slow degrees these primitive utterances, modified, increased 
and combined, are associated with ideas, which are also 
modified, increased and combined, until finally the instru- 
ment of language is completely under control, and becomes 
the adequate medium for the expression of thought. 

Not only may we make this statement in this general way, 
but it seems possible to trace, with approximate minuteness, 
the progress of a sound upward, from the earliest unexpres- 
sive condition to the highest, latest, most expressive state, 
and to indicate the principal stages on the way. These 
stages appear to be the same as those through which move- 
ments pass, viz., the impulsive, the reflex, the instinctive, and 
the ideational. The first sounds uttered by the child are 
simply the spontaneous will-less, idea-less manifestation of 
native motor energy. They do not require a sensory, but 
only a motor process, and that motor process is automatic. 
The same overflowing energy, the same muscle-instinct, 
which impels the child to grasp with the hands, to kick 
with the feet, etc., impels him also to the exercise of his 
lips, tongue, larynx and lungs. This is the impulsive 

stage. Then we find him uttering sounds in response 
to certain sensations. He sees a bright light, hears a 



LANGUAGE. 159 

peculiar sound, feels a soft, warm touch, and these sen- 
sations call forth certain sounds. These sounds are still 
only babblings, not involving the cooperation of will, but 
they do involve sensory as well as motor processes. The 
reflex arc, in its simplest form, is complete. Here imitation 
takes its rise. This is the reflexive stage. In the next place 
we can detect certain sounds which are expressive of the 
child's needs, and though still uttered probably without 
conscious intention, yet have a purpose and an end, viz., 
the satisfaction of those needs. The cr}^, which was at first 
monotonous and expressionless, now becomes differentiated 
to express various states of feeling, hunger, pain, weariness, 
etc. Here we have the instinctive stage. Finally the will 
takes full possession of the apparatus of speech, the child 
utters his words with conscious intention ; imitation of 
sounds, from being passive and unconscious, becomes active 
and conscious ; and words are joined together to give ex- 
pression to ideas of constantly increasing complexity. Here 
we have reached the ideational or deliberative stage. 

As an example of the transformation of a single sound 
through all these successive stages, let us take that sound 
which is, in the majority of cases, the first articulation, the 
syllable ma. At first this is pure spontaneity. The child 
lies contentedly in his cradle, motor energy overflows, the 
lips move, gently opening and closing, while the breath is 
expired, and this sound is produced, mamamama. As yet 
it has no meaning ; it is a purely automatic utterance. But 
by and by the same sound is called forth b}^ certain sensa- 
tions, one of which is very probably the sight of the mother, 
or of some other person. The word as yet has no definite 
meaning, but is merely a sort of vague demonstrative ejacu- 
lation, a pure reflex. Later it becomes the expression of 
certain bodily needs and conditions, and now the hungry 
child utters this sound as the expression of the need of his 



160 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

natural nourishment. By this means, the word becomes 
firmly associated with the mother, first probably with the 
breast only, but afterwards with her person in general, 
and so the final step in the transition is made, and the word 
mama now passes out of the semi-conscious, instinctive 
stage into the ideational. It becomes firmly associated with 
the mother, and with her only, it is used with a conscious 
purpose of communicating to her the child's wishes and 
ideas, and, finally, in her absence, it is used in such a way 
as to show that her image is firmly stamped on his mind, 
and retained in his memory. In later life, more abstract 
and complex applications of this word are gradually mas- 
tered; but we have followed it far enough in its devel- 
opment for our present purpose. This word was chosen 
because it probably exemplifies better than any other the 
principle which we desired to illustrate, being associated 
with those feelings which arise earliest, last longest, and 
take the deepest hold upon the human soul ; but almost 
any primitive utterance of infancy could be employed to 
exemplify, in a less complete manner, the principle enun- 
ciated. 



CHAPTER YI. 

ESTHETIC, MORAL, AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 

In former editions I have not ventured into this large and 
important fiekl; and I do so now, not with any thought of 
covering it, but merely to draw attention to some of the 
more significant features, which recent investigations have 
brought to light, as marking the development of the average 
child in these aspects of his nature. 

In discussing the development of the aesthetic in child- 
hood, I shall refer more especially to the appreciation of the 
beautiful, and to the reproduction, by children, in pictures, 
of objects presented to their view. 

Children, at a very early age, are attracted by bright 
colors. As early as the third or fourth month they have 
been observed to look fixedly at gayly colored objects, such 
as tassels, curtains, and even pictures. There is, of course, 
in the latter case, no comprehension of the picture as a 
representation. The symbolic and representative character 
of the picture is entirely lost on the young child. The 
picture is to him a real object. He sees it merely as a fact, 
a presentation, and not at all as a symbol. In the same way 
his own image in the mirror is to him at first merely a 
presentation. Children must learn gradually, through ex- 
perience, the symbolic and representative character of all 
such things. 

If this be true, it follows also that the young child cannot 
and does not draw pictures in the proper sense of the term. 

161 



162 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

That is to say, there is an age at which he cannot under- 
stand anything as a symbol or representation, and therefore 
he cannot consciously and intentionally produce a picture 
as a representation of an object. In fact, we find here the 
same law of development, involving the same principle of 
transformation, as we have found everywhere else in the 
mental life of childhood. The first performance of a child 
with a pencil and paper is merely an aimless scribble, 
involving, on the mental side, nothing more than an outflow 
of energy, with possibly a vague, sensori-motor imitation 
of movements made by older persons in his presence. The 
product is, of course, not a representation, though it may, 
by accident, resemble some object. There v/as no inten- 
tion to produce a representation, no attempt to project on 
the paper any idea in the mind. 

Beginning probably about the third or fourth year, we 
may observe the dawning of the idea of representation. 
The child now begins to draw objects; and it is of the 
greatest interest to observe what are the things with which 
he, by preference, occupies himself. Ninety -nine per cent 
of the drawings at this age are drawings of human beings, 
or, at least, are intended to represent human beings. Not 
only may we see this prevailing interest in human person- 
ality, — as might be expected, if we bear in mind the fact 
that the child is surrounded from the beginning of his life 
by human beings, and looks to them constantly for the sat- 
isfaction of his wants, — but we may also observe how 
strongly children's interests are aroused by things that 
move, in preference to those that are at rest. He tries to 
represent the man walking or running, swinging his arms, 
and, in all probability, paffing great wreaths of smoke from 
an immensely elongated pipe. If he draws a house, it is 
with an abundance of chimneys, all smoking profusely. 

But all this comes at a somewhat more advanced stage. 



ESTHETIC, MORAL, AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 163 

The earliest drawings are very rude, and conspicuously 
lacking in fulness of detail. The child appears perfectly 
content with the crudest sort of a representation, with 
something that can scarcely be called a picture at all, but 
is rather a mere symbol standing for, rather than resembling, 
the object. A rude square or circle, with perhaps a couple 
of lines projecting from the lower side, is at this stage a 
satisfactory representation of a man. Some children add 
an abundance of mere scribble instead of details; scribble 
for hands, hair, clothing, etc. Indeed, the evolution of the 
pictorial art in childhood is marked by the gradual decrease 
and final elimination of scribble; and, at the same time, by 
the gradual increase in fulness and accuracy of detailed 
delineation. Dr. Lukens^ found that the scribble-element 
had well-nigh disappeared in the fifth year. This, of 
course, would vary greatly with different children. 

We must notice one more interesting feature of chil- 
dren's drawings. For a considerable time after the scribble- 
element has been tolerably well eliminated, the child is still 
unable to distinguish between njhat he sees of the object 
before him, and ichat he knoivs about the object. In other 
words, he is unable to comprehend perspective. And hence, 
in his pictures, he attempts, not a mere delineation, but a 
description of the object. He shows both eyes, and perhaps 
both ears, in a profile of the human face. He draws a house 
with three sides visible, and shows you both the legs of a 
man riding on horseback. There can be no doubt, in fact, 
that the child's earliest knowledge of an object is of a 
'' vague whole " ; and that his comprehension of parts and 
relations of parts, as well as his knowledge of how the object 
presents itself to the observer who is viewing it from one 
standpoint only (as in a picture), these are achievements of 

1 Pedagogical Seminary^ IV., 1. 



164 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

abstraction which require time and experience. It seems 
therefore an unwise method that requires the child to begin 
by drawing such abstractions as lines and points, which are 
never found in nature. Let him begin by drawing a whole, 
real object, even though he draw it ever so crudely. The 
whole, real object is the concrete, and should precede the 
line and the point, which are abstractions. 

Of the decorative as distinguished from the r<;presentative 
in the art of childhood, but little can be said, so far as the 
child under seven years of age is concerned. The element 
of ornamentation was found, in Mrs. Maitland's examina- 
tion of sixteen hundred spontaneous drawings made by 
children of live to seven years, to be only 3 per cent of 
the whole. Dr. O'Shea asked a number of children to draw 
an ornamented chair. He found that children of five years 
ignored the ornamentation altogether. This is entirely in 
keeping with the fact, already noticed elsewhere, that a 
child's thought about an object is closely bound up with its 
use or purpose, and his spontaneous definitions of objects 
invariably make this feature prominent. So in drawing. 
The parts of the object prominently concerned in its use or 
ac^iOTi are prominently portrayed; while those parts whose 
functions are not obvious, are likely to be ignored. 

To trace the rise and development of the feeling of the 
beautiful to anything like fulness, would carry us, as it 
seems to me, far beyond the period of early childhood. The 
infant is attracted by gay colors, but this seems to be an affair 
of the sensory chiefly. And even as such it apparently 
does not extend to for7n or arrangement. A well-arranged 
bouquet possesses no more attractions for a child of one or 
two years than an ill-arranged one, so far as my observa- 
tions go. He cares no more for a beautiful form than for 
one that we adults would call ugly; as witness the ardent 
affection of many a child for a dilapidated and filthy rag- 



ESTHETIC, MORAL, AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 165 

doll in preference to any new and beantiful one. A boy of 
two and a half years, whom I have had much opportunity 
of observing, plays constantly with an old toy wagon, so 
decrepit as to require almost daily repairs, while he ignores 
completely the gayly painted and beautiful new one which 
his father has bought for him. This, of course, is not held 
to be an evidence of a perverted aesthetic taste, but rather 
merely that aesthetic considerations are as yet practically 
inoperative in the choice of playthings. 

It seems also extremely doubtful whether a child under 
ten years of age is able to enter fully into those feelings 
which actuate most adults on beholding a beautiful land- 
scape, a splendid painting, or a magnificent product of 
architectural skill. He is not able as yet to understand the 
feelings experienced by us in the presence of these things, 
partly, at least, because he is not yet strong enough, men- 
tally, to grasp them as total effects, but can notice only some 
prominent and striking detail ; partly, also, because there is 
but little movement or life in the landscape, and none at all 
in the painting or the building. All the actions of little 
children go to show that their preferences are determined 
far more by the amount of vitality and movement in the 
object than by any aesthetic qualities it may possess. 

Passing now to a brief notice of the moral nature of child- 
hood, I must first of all express my strong conviction, based 
upon observation as well as upon abstract reasoning, that 
moral ideas do not require to be created or implanted in the 
minds of children by their elders. jSTothing is more certain 
than that the child is born potentially a moral being, pos- 
sessing a moral nature which requires only to be evoked and 
developed by environmental conditions. If this be not true, 
then neither is it true that he is born potentially an active 
being, possessing a volitional nature which requires only 
to be evoked and developed by suitable conditions. If no 



166 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD, 

amount of training can ever make a moral being of a dog, 
it is because lie possesses no moral nature to begin with. 
If a child is capable of attaining to advanced moral ideas 
and distinctions, it is because he possesses at the outset a 
moral nature upon which instruction and discipline can take 
hold. An empirical account of the derivation of the moral 
nature out of conditions in which no germs of it are to be 
found, fails utterly when tested either by observed facts or 
by logical criticism. 

But, on the other hand, it would be equally wide of the 
mark to say that children are born into the world fully 
equipped moral beings. The same transformation, in fact, 
takes place here as elsewhere. The new-born is everything 
potentially, nothing actually. He is full to overflowing 
with moral capabilities, which awake to active functioning 
as soon as the proper conditions are extant; just as his 
senses awake to active functioning as soon as the proper 
material conditions become available. And these capabili- 
ties and tendencies, moreover, which I have here called 
moral, do not all point in one direction. Some of them, as 
Professor Sully remarks, are pro-moral, and others are 
contra-moral. The young child betrays astonishing capaci- 
ties for virtue, and, at the same time, equally surprising 
capabilities for vice. He is capable of the loftiest achieve- 
ments in virtue, and, at the same time (and very likely for 
the same reason), he is capable of sinking to the lowest 
depths of depravity. But at the outset he is neither the 
one nor the other, simply because he lacks, as yet, that 
comprehension of moral law, and of the relation of actions 
thereto, which is a sine qua non of both virtue and vice. 

It follows, too, from all this, that the actions of a young 
child must be viewed from a somewhat different standpoint, 
and judged by somewhat different criteria, from those 
applied to the actions of adults, if we would avoid a mis- 



ESTHETIC, MORAL, AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 167 

taken moral diagnosis. A child's act, on its external side, 
may resemble very closely that of an adult in the same cir- 
cumstances ; but, on the inner side, it may be devoid of that 
conscious intention to compass a certain end, which is 
essential to its strictly ethical character. A man may 
behave in a cruel manner to his horse, in the full knowl- 
edge of the pain he is inflicting, and in full consciousness 
of the disharmony between his conduct and the moral ideal; 
a child pulls the cat's tail, very likely with no idea of the 
painful consequences of his act, merely from an overflow of 
energy, or as an expression of his instinct of power. Obvi- 
ously, the two actions differ very widely in moral character. 
So, as many careful observers can testify, the falsehoods of 
children are not always lies, and their acts of rebellion 
against authority do not, in every case, possess all the 
marks of malicious and premeditated disobedience. Little 
children are swa3^ed, to a very great extent, by the vivid- 
ness of their imagination and by the strength of their 
impulses. Conscious, deliberate, moral conduct requires 
time and experience for its full development. 

Nevertheless, when once the moral nature has awakened 
into activity, there is no class of ideas which children accept 
more readily than those of morality. To find that certain 
things are "right" and others "wrong," causes them no 
more surprise than to find that certain articles of food are 
beneficial and others injurious. The fact that a child 
requires instruction and a certain accumulation of experi- 
ence in order that he shall properly classify concrete actions 
under ethical rubrics, is no more an argument in favor of 
the experiential origin of his moral ideas than is his fail- 
ure to correctly locate distant objects an argument in favor 
of the experiential derivation of the idea of space. Indeed, 
it seems to me tliat a very instructive parallel may be drawn 
just here. As, in the case of perception, the discernment of 



168 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

the actual space-qualities of real objects becomes more and 
more accurate through the accumulation of experience, 
while, Oil the other hand, no object could ever have been 
perceived at all, but for the space-form contributed by the 
subject; so it is in moral distinctions. Experience and 
instruction quicken our discernment of the moral qualities 
of concrete acts ; but, at the same time, the very first act of 
moral discernment, as well as all subsequent ones, presup- 
pose and require that ethical-form, if I may so name it, 
which is the contribution of the subject himself. 

A number of valuable studies have been made in recent 
years on the moral nature of childhood, and some of the 
results may be briefly indicated. Dr. Hall,^ in an inves- 
tigation touching the moral nature of some three hundred 
city children, mostly between the ages of twelve and fo'ir- 
teen, found that none were destitute of high ideals of truth- 
fulness. Sometimes they showed a painful degree of 
pseudo-phobia, or fear of deviating in the smallest degree 
from literal accuracy of statement. On the other hand, 
when lies were told, many excuses and palliatives were 
found. Lies told to shelter a weaker playmate, to please 
a very warm friend, or to attain some much-coveted object, 
were looked upon as extremely pardonable. Falsehoods, in 
many cases, are the result of vivid juvenile imagination, and 
in such cases, being told \\\ perfect sincerity, are not lies at 
all. Several studies have been made, by Professor Earl 
Barnes and others,^ on the subject of punishment, and it 
is found that all children admit that wrong acts require 
punishment, though the reasons given are various, and 
among the younger children there is, as one would expect, 
a certain readiness to accept the dicta of authority on the 

1 " Children's Lies," Americayi Journal of Psychology^ JsumB^rj, 
1890. '^ See Pedagogical Seminary. 



ESTHETIC, MORAL, AND UELIGIOUS IDEAS. 169 

question. This feature, however, is far less prominent than 
one might suppose, and decreases rapidly with the growth 
of the child. It is also to be observed that the number of 
children who take an exclusively utilitarian view of the 
purpose of punishment, is surprisingly small. In one in' 
vestigation, while 38 per cent of the children said the pun- 
ishment was just "because children ought to obey," only 
6 per cent said " because it would make the child more care- 
ful in future." This suggests a very important thought, 
viz., that all punishment ought to be based directly on the 
moral law. In other words, it ought always to be under- 
stood, when a child is punished, that he is suffering because 
of his violation of right, suffering because he has done 
wrong, because he has transgressed the commands of those 
who, to him, are the living representatives of moral order. 
To base all punishment on mere " consequences " in the way 
of pain and pleasure, as Spencer and Rousseau have done, 
is to lose sight entirely of the real purpose of moral disci- 
pline, and hopelessly to obscure the real issue at stake. 
I^atural law is one thing, moral law is another. To confine 
child-punishment to the ''discipline of consequences," is to 
ignore the existence of moral law altogether. Such a method 
receives its most telling rebuke from the children them- 
selves, when they tell us that they consider punishment not 
merely as corrective and preventative, but also as retribu- 
tive — the vengeance of a moral environment against a wil- 
ful violation of its sanctity. The attempted reduction of 
moral law to natural law is simply an attempt to get rid 
of moral law altogether. It entirely ignores the elemenj 
of personality, and dilutes responsibility by placing acci- 
dents that are followed by physical pain on exactly the 
same level as moral dereliction. According to this " disci- 
pline of consequences " it should be just as wrong to stumble 
and hurt oneself as to disobey one's parents and be pun- 



170 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

ished. But any child knows better than this without 
special instruction. The doctrine, moreover, utterly con- 
fuses the child's moral perspective by teaching him (by 
implication) that no action of his is wrong provided he can 
manage to escape its painful consequences. But it is 
scarcely necessary to discuss further at present a doctrine 
already so widely discredited by competent psychologists 
and educators. It is, however, very gratifying to be able 
to express my thorough conviction that the normal child, 
as well as the average, unsophisticated man, is at one with 
Kant, in his thoroughgoing separation of moral law and 
moral obligation from every vestige of dependence on 
"empirical instigations." 

These considerations lead naturally to our final topic, the 
religious nature of the child. The connecting link between 
morality and religion, so far, at least, as childhood is con- 
cerned, is to be found in several facts, which may serve as 
the occasion for the few remarks we have to make : 

(1) Right and good are naturally connected, in the child's 
mind, with the personality of some adult for whom he feels 
affection, reverence, and trust. As moral ideas develop, 
they are naturally closely associated with those persons 
(normally the parents) whose wishes, commands, prohi- 
bitions, are coincident with, and very apt to become 
synonymous in the child's mind with the requirements of 
a moral order. Hence, the element of responsibility to 
some superior person becomes clearly developed; and this 
comes to pass the more easily in view of the fact that com- 
prehension of the wish of a real person is much less diffi- 
cult than comprehension of abstract moral distinctions. 

(2) In this way, as is perfectly natural, the child comes 
to look upon some person (in all probability his mother) as 
the living embodiment of moral ivorth, as well as of moral 
order. He feels his responsil)ility to her; he knows she is 



ESTHETIC, MORAL, AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 171 

pleased when lie does right, and displeased when he doe& 
wrong. His ideas of right and wrong become inseparably 
associated with her personality. In a very real sense she 
stands to him in the place of God. And perhaps ifc may not 
be irreverent to suggest (though the tremendous respon- 
sibility of parenthood is thereby clearly indicated) that a 
child's parents should, as they in most cases certainly do, 
constitute his divinity pro tern : all the divinity that he, 
at least up to a certain age, is able to understand ; and that 
his worship of them is probably the best preparation he can 
have for a higher worship later on. Keverence and love 
for parents are the best prelude to reverence and love for 
Jehovah. It is a tolerably safe assertion, that a child who, 
for any reason, has never worshipped his mother, will be by 
so much the less likely ever to worship any other divinity. 
The child who has never known what it meant to be trained 
in voluntary submission of his will to the will of wise 
parents, will be by so much the less likely ever to yield to 
God that ardent submission and service which is the mark 
of the truly religious life. 

(3) Should I be charged with anthropomorphism, on 
account of these remarks, I should make a twofold answer : 
In the first place, in the case of a young child, you must 
choose between anthropomorphism and nothing at all. He 
is not yet able to comprehend a purely spiritual personality. 
He lives in the world of sense, and is, for the present, com- 
pletely confined to the material. And if God, to him, is 
not like father or mother (the best people the child knows), 
to whom shall he be compared? And I should like to ask 
my supposed critic^ even though he be a professor of the- 
ology or metaphysic, whether he is quite certain that his 
own conception of the Divine Being, even at threescore 
years and ten, is absolutely free from the last vestige of 
anthropomorphism. 



172 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD. 

And, in the second place, is it fair to assume, at the out- 
set, that anthropomorphism is entirely eril and false? 
Does a sound theology or philosophy acknowledge no com- 
munity of attributes between God and man? Is not that 
rather the truest view, which looks upon man as made in 
the divine likeness ; and teaches that one of the most effec- 
tive channels to knowledge of God is by way of a true 
insight into the real nature of man'^ 

(4) And now, if this be the road to religious training, 
viz., through human personality to the Divine, does it not 
follow, as Dr. Hall has said,^ that religious, as well as 
moral, training should begin in the cradle? Reverential 
submission to parental authority, implicit trust in parental 
wisdom, and tender affection in response to parental love 
— these are the natural preludes to religion in the higher 
sense, and these can be cultivated almost from the very 
dawn of conscious life. 

(5) "But," it maybe objected, "you have not shown that 
religious training is any necessary part of child culture. 
May it not be worth while to inquire whether there is really 
any place for religion in human culture ; whether we ought 
not to eliminate this relic of superstition and substitute for 
it the knowledge and worship of nature?" 

To this I answer by simply pointing to the religious 
nature as a bona fide constituent of human thought and feel- 
ing. It is no more a spurious interpolation than is the 
moral life. A sound and thoroughgoing psychological 
analysis finds it as a datum of human consciousness, capa- 
ble, of course, like every other faculty, of development 
through experience, as well as of distortion through false 
teaching; but withal a genuine thing, not owing its origin 
to the superstitions of the nursery. And if education in 

1 Pedagogical Seminary, I., 2. 



ESTHETIC, MORAL, AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 173 

the true sense means the development of the whole person- 
ality, then the religious nature demands its share in the 
culture of the individual. And if this demand be refused, 
the individual is by so much imperfectly developed.^ 

(6) What, then, finally, shall be the relation of nature - 
study to religious training? Little children are constantly 
speculating as to the sources of things in the material 
world. Ko question is more frequently on their lips than, 
" Who made this? " " Where did this come from? " Is there 
no connection between this and the religious consciousness? 
Surely! The soundest metaphysical view with which I am 
acquainted finds the whole visible material universe to be 
but the infinitely varied and beautiful expression of one 
great, eternal being. Through nature, then, to nature's 
God, would seem to be one of the ways and means of 
religious growth, and natural religion becomes the basis and 
indispensable prelude to revealed religion. A proper appre- 
ciation of nature, as the product of the Divine power and 
wisdom, is by no means an unworthy stepping-stone to a 
proper appreciation of redemption as an expression of the 
Divine Love. 



1 It will be observed that I have employed no other but the psycho- 
logical argument ; not because of any lack of confidence in other lines 
of proof, but merely because none of the others lies within the scope 
of this treatise. 



INDEX. 



Abstraction, 61. 

Action, 51, 91, 102. 

Affectation, 110. 

Affection, 84. 

Altruism, SO. 

Analogy, 65. 

Auger, 75, 110. 

Association, 52, 53, 54, 61, 1.34. 

Astonishment, 78. 

Attention, 48, Dl, 92, 111, li:J. 

Beautiful, feeling of, 82, 161, 164, etc. 
Beckoning, 103. 
Blinking, 7. 
Brain, 123. 



Color, 14, 101. 

Concept, 59, 134, 138. 

Consonants, 149. 

Coordination, 6. 

Coughing, 95, 103. 

Creeping, 100. 

Crowing, 93. 

Cry, ix., 43, 95, 104, 106, 108, 125, 159. 

Curiosity, 79. 



Deaf-mutes, 59. 

Denotation, 62. 

Desire, 91. 92, 110, 111, 113, 118. 

Differentiation, 45. 

Disobedience, 167. 

Doll, 105. 

Dramatic instinct, 83. 

Drawing, 161, etc. 

Dreams. 56, 75. 

Ear, 20, 30, 117. 



Eye, 2, 6, 7, 29, 96. 

Falsehood, 167, 168. 
Fixation, 8. 

Foetus, 1, 2, 20. 27, .35, 37, 39, 41, 93, 
95, 123. 

Generalization, 61. 
Gesture, 118. 
Gutturals, 150. 

Habit, 94. 

Head, holding, 100; shaking, 109; 

nodding, 109. 
Hearing, 23, 24, 47, 73. 
Heredity, 26, 44, 79, 83, 92, 94, 115. 
Hiccough, 95. 
Homesickue-ss, 85. 
Humor, 81. 
Hunger and thirst, 39, 40. 

"I,"68, 69, 70, 137. 

Idiots, 26. 

Illusions, 47. 

Imagination, 55, 56, 86. 

Imitation, 45, 56, 102, 103, 104, 105, 

109, 128, 129, 131, 133, 138, 139, 151, 

159. 
Impatience, 77. 
Inhibition, 95, 97, 109, 112. 
Instinct, 41, 58, 83, 87, 92, 98, 117. 
Invention, 117, 132. 

Jealousy, 87. 
Judsrment, 63. 



Kiss, 84, 108. 
175 



17(; 



INDEX. 



Laugh, 82, <)5, lOfi. 
Light, 4, 5. 
Lips, 28, 122. 
Localization, 45. 

Mama, 127, 159. 

"Me," 70, 137. 

Mirror-image, 47, 54, G7, 161. 

Mispronunciations, 148, 151. 

Morality, 1(55, 1(59. 

Mouth movements, 98, 100. 

Movement, 6, 7, 38, 39, 41, 45, 51, 66, 

91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 102, 106, 110, 111, 

118. 
Muscular feeling, 41. 
Music, 24, 82, l6(j, 128. 

Nostrils, 29, 30. 

Pain, 5, 39, 40, 97. 

Papa, 56, 127. 

Parts of speech, 136, 145, etc. 

Perspective, 12, 163. 

Pictures, 63, 161. 

Play, 80. 

Pouting, 107. 

Property instinct, 68, 86. 

Punishment, 168. 

Purpose, notion of, 62. 

Reasoning, 63. 
Recept, 60. 
Recognition, 84. 
Reduplication, 133, 139, 157. 
Reflexes, 5, 94, 95, 96, 97, 159. 
Religion, 79, 170, etc. 
Respiration, 95. 
Rhyming, 54. 
Rhythm, 129, mi 



Right-handedness, etc., 98. 

Selfishness, 86. 
Sentences, 132, 135. 
Sibilants, 137. 
Singing, 133. 
Sitting, 100. 
Smile, 81, 84, 93, 106. 
Sneezing, 95. 
Space, 43, 45, 167. 
Standing, 100. 
Starting, 96. 
Stretching, 93. 
Sucking, 38, 39, 46, 64, 99. 
Suggestion,85, 89, 113. 
Summation of stimuli, 51. 
Surprise, 78. 
Swallowing, 95. 
Syllables, 127.' 
Sympathy, 85. 

Teeth, 98, 122. 
Temperature, 37, 38. 
Thumb, contraposition, 98. 
Tongue, 28, 100, 122. 
Transformation, ix., 71, 80, 90, 94, 
106, 158. 

Vanity, 68, 83, 110, 162, 166. 
Visual interpretation, 18, 19. 
Vocal apparatus, 121, 122. 
Vowels, 126. 

Walking, 100. 
Weeping, 109. 
Whistling, 104. 
Will, 92, 102, 110, 112. 
AA^ords, 131. 

Yawning, 93. 



ADVERTISEMENTS 



A COURSE IN 
EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 

By Edmund C. Sanford, Ph.D. 

iAssi slant Professor of Psychology in Clark Universily. 



PART I — SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 

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Appendix L Listing's Law in the Hemispherical and 
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n. Some Simple Cases of the Mathematical 
Horopter. 
HL Notes and Suggestions on Chapters I-VI. 



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